RTFM episode #1562, GFCI outlet edition

FormerHangie

FormerHangie

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A couple of weeks ago, the outside electric outlet on the back of my house stopped working. Pressing the reset button did nothing. Yesterday I finally got around to diagnosing it by pulling it out of the junction box and applying my little voltage tester to the wires. Sure enough, there was indeed 120 volts there, so I figured all I needed to do was replace it with another outlet. Went to Homer's place, picked up a nice new Leviton outlet with water resistant sockets, and figured all I had to do was to wire it up the same way the old one was, right? Apparently not, as I wired it up and it didn't work. I tried resetting it, still no juice. Hey, where's that instruction sheet? Ok, where's the English language instruction sheet? What's that, the line and load terminals are on the opposite ends of the outlet? And the outlet comes out of the box in a tripped state and won't reset until everything is wired correctly?

I could have saved quite a bit of time if I'd just read the bleeping manual.
 
Too funny... reminds me of this joke:

Three men are in the wilderness and come upon a wide raging river.
The first man prays "God, give me the strength to cross this river" and Poof! his arms and legs swell up and he swims across the river in 2 hours.
The second man prays "God, give me the strength and tools to cross this river" and Poof! he is given a kayak and paddles across the river in 30 mins.
The third man prays "God, give me the strength, tools, and wisdom to cross this river" and Poof! he is transformed into a woman, she looks at her map and walks 5 min to the bridge across the river.
 
Breakers and GFCIs almost always come pretripped because they're tripped as part of the manufacturing QA. Yep, there's no standard for GFCI and most GFCIs will not reset unless power is present on the line side (and obviously there's no fault on the load side).
 
Had a more on topic problem with a manual this weekend.

Installing electric lock with keypad on the hangar door. Damn thing wouldn't accept my codes, beeping and beeping, started over, beeped some more.

The step with all the BOLD typeface said to push buttons x y and z to teach the lock what orientation it was mounted in.

Completed that step and everything already programmed was there and it works just great.
 
I have a mix of GFCI outlets. I'm pretty sure some have an LED indicating tripped, and some have an LED indicating power (not tripped).
 
A while back a pilot friend asked me over to diagnose his Garage lights, we put a meter on the switch and it only a a few volts at the switch. Other light and outlets on the same circuit were working fine.

I asked him if there were any other switches for the garage lights, since there were 3 wires going to the switch, he said he didn't think so, which didn't make sense to me because of the 3 wires. So I walked over to the other Garage entrance and found one of the flat style light switches with a rake handle leaned up against it perfectly centering the switch so it wasn't providing power to either side of the double throw switch. He didn't even know there was a light switch at that door.
 
The house my wife grew up in (MIL's old house) had 3 3-way switches in the main hallway. One at each end, and one in the middle.

The first time I visited, I couldn't figure out how to get the hall light to turn on. "Oh, yeah, you have to turn that one on, that one off, then this one on. Then this switch will work." Or some goofy combination. I can't remember if I finally got tired of it and fixed it, or if I just left it since my MIL had memorized the combination after all those years.

3-ways with 2 are bad enough, but someone had a heckuva time wiring up that third switch.

edit: That was also the house that had a couple of outlets that didn't work. Turns out they were switched, and the switch was hidden behind a bookcase. When we finally moved her out, we found the switch. Off, of course.
 
Matthew said:
I have a mix of GFCI outlets. I'm pretty sure some have an LED indicating tripped, and some have an LED indicating power (not tripped).
Click to expand...
Yeah, I have a mix of both forms. Most of mine are green when not tripped (and powered). I've got a couple that light up when tripped.

I worked for years in a facility that had a light switch about half way down a rather featureless hallway. It appeared to do nothing. We'd throw it from time to time but it didn't seem to have any effect. Then one day I noticed that there was a light in the elevator shaft (about 50' down the hall from the switch). A little while later I passed the switch and flipped it and then went to the elevator and noticed the shaft light was off. Hmm... went back and flipped the switch again...light on. Nobody knows why they put the light switch for the elevator shaft so far from the elevator, but at least we know what the switch does.

It reminds me of that commercial where the guy is flipping the switch repeatedly in his garage to figure out what it does and the neighbor's garage door is opening and closing.
 
Matthew said:
The house my wife grew up in (MIL's old house) had 3 3-way switches in the main hallway. One at each end, and one in the middle.

The first time I visited, I couldn't figure out how to get the hall light to turn on. "Oh, yeah, you have to turn that one on, that one off, then this one on. Then this switch will work." Or some goofy combination. I can't remember if I finally got tired of it and fixed it, or if I just left it since my MIL had memorized the combination after all those years.

3-ways with 2 are bad enough, but someone had a heckuva time wiring up that third switch.

edit: That was also the house that had a couple of outlets that didn't work. Turns out they were switched, and the switch was hidden behind a bookcase. When we finally moved her out, we found the switch. Off, of course.
Click to expand...

You have grossly oversimplified this.....on a setup with 3 switches you actually need a switch that is a 4 way. I just wired one and followed the instruction very carefully and by some miracle it worked. Your example above was wired incorrectly.
 
Yeah, I was putting in a dimmer in a three-way (I thought) and pulled the old switch from the wall and found it was a four way. Great, this I can deal with but I need to figure out WHERE the third switch is now. I only knew of two. Amusingly, this is in a room that will be part of a larger room when my house is finished. The builder actually wired up a third switch and put it in the storage area nearby so that when we bust through the wall we could easily extend it to the other room.
 
Getonit said:
You have grossly oversimplified this.....on a setup with 3 switches you actually need a switch that is a 4 way. I just wired one and followed the instruction very carefully and by some miracle it worked. Your example above was wired incorrectly.
Click to expand...
No kidding!
 
flyingron said:
It reminds me of that commercial where the guy is flipping the switch repeatedly in his garage to figure out what it does and the neighbor's garage door is opening and closing.
Click to expand...

A buddy of mine moved into his house and found a doorbell button somewhere on his kitchen wall. He pressed it, but nothing happened. This went on for a while - if he'd get up in the middle of the night for something, he'd get curious and press it, first thing in the morning, whenever he thought about it.

A week or two later, he finally met his neighbor for the first time. The neighbor asked him to please stop pressing that button. Turns out the previous owner was an elderly chap, living on his own, and he and the neighbor had put the button inside as a signal in case the old guy needed assistance.
 
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