| Steps for Installing a GFCI Receptacle
Tips:
Shallow 2" boxes won't have enough room for both the receptacle and the splicing.
Normally, bare copper wires are ground, white are neutral, and black are hot. However, not everyone follows the standard, so test your wires with a tester if you are not sure they are correct.
1. Turn off the breaker.
Start by turning the breaker for the circuit OFF at the main service panel. Confirm the correct circuit is off by plugging in a test plug, light, or radio into the outlet to be replaced with a GFCI one. Obviously, if the circuit is off, no power will be at the receptacle.
2. Remove the old receptacle and test the circuit.
Take off the receptacle cover, remove the screws that hold the old receptacle in place, and pull it from the box. Remove the wires from the terminals.
For more than one wire set...
If there are two or more cables coming into the box, you may not be able to determine which wire set is the incoming feeder (from the breaker) and which wire set is a feed for other outlets downstream. If so, separate the wires and group them together according to which cable they come from, Pull one cable's wires out to one side; if there's another, pull its wires to the opposite side. Make sure ALL contacts are separate from each other!
Turn on the power to circuit again. Be careful not to touch the wires or touch them together. Use your voltage tester to find the incoming hot wire set. The hot wire should be black. The white wire in the same cable will be the neutral. The unshielded copper is the ground (if existing). The additional sets of white and black wires will be the downstream outlets on the same circuit. To be sure, test them, as well. Now that the hot wire set is confirmed, turn of the power again.
3. Install the GFCI receptacle.
Connect the black and white wires of the feeder cable to the LINE terminals on the GFCI receptacle. Make sure the neutral wire goes to the LINE terminal marked neutral or white (silver screw) and the black or hot wire goes to the LINE terminal marked black or hot (brass screw). Connect the bare copper ground wire to the green screw on the receptacle.
Fold into the receptacle box the wire sets wires carefully and stuff them into the box. Then screw the receptacle back into place and attach the cover that came with the receptacle.
For more than one wire set...
If there's a second downstream wire set, normally you want these outlets (or light) to also have the same protection. Connect its wires to the LOAD screws on the new GFCI receptacle. As before, the second cable's neutral wire goes to the LOAD white or "neutral" screw, and the hot wire goes to the black or "hot" LOAD screw.
If you don't want the second cable to have ground-fault protection, splice its hot, neutral and ground wires with the corresponding wires from the incoming feeder cable, and use short lengths of wire as jumpers between the spliced wires and the GFCI receptacle. (The idea is to never connect more than one wire to a terminal.) If there's more than one ground wire in the outlet box, splice them all together along with a 6-inch jumper wire and connect it to the receptacle's ground terminal.
4. Test installation.
Switch back on circuit's breaker. Plug in your test plug, radio, or light into the new GFCI receptacles. Press the GFCI receptacle's Test button, and the outlet should go "dead". Press the Reset button, and the power should be restored. If there's no sound, at all check if the Reset button popped to the "out" position during installation. Press the Reset button and test.
Periodic Testing ...
Test your GFCI receptacles monthly, and replace any that don't trip when you push the Test button. A defective GFCI receptacle can still provide power without protecting you from shock. If a receptacle trips while you're using a device plugged into it, try resetting it once. If the receptacle trips again, there's probably a problem with the device. Have it checked and repaired before using it again.
GFCI receptacles can occasionally go bad and trip for no reason. Should this become a problem, replace the receptacle. If the new one trips, you may have a wiring problem. Check your wiring behind the new GFCI receptacle. If you cannot location the issue, consult an electrician.
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