my gfci tripped when i plugged my blender in it and the blade got stuck as i had stuffed too much stuff in it. thats when my nightmare started. I replaced the GFC I and was careful about the Load vs line problem ... and it did not work .. thinking that I had a bad GFCI outlet I bought another one and tried that and that did not work either ... I went in for yet another GFCI outlet and this one worked ... but only for a day and the outlet has gone dead again ... I have tested the circuit with my voltmeter ... it's showing me 122V between the hot wire and neutral as well as between the hot wire and ground ... The only thing I have plugged in there is my microwave ... The microwave is fine because I have been plugging it into another GFCI outlet nearby and it has been working fine for over a week ... any ideas what am i doing wrong ?
my gfci tripped when i plugged my blender in it and the blade got stuck as i had stuffed too much stuff in it. thats when my nightmare started. I replaced the GFC I and was careful about the Load vs line problem ... and it did not work .. thinking that I had a bad GFCI outlet I bought another one and tried that and that did not work either ... I went in for yet another GFCI outlet and this one worked ... but only for a day and the outlet has gone dead again ... I have tested the circuit with my voltmeter ... it's showing me 122V between the hot wire and neutral as well as between the hot wire and ground ... The only thing I have plugged in there is my microwave ... The microwave is fine because I have been plugging it into another GFCI outlet nearby and it has been working fine for over a week ... any ideas what am i doing wrong ?
A GFCI test button will also not work if there is no ground.
What type of meter are you using?
Remove the GFCI and measure from the hot to a neutral, ground and hot of another GFCI (GFCI removed)
measure from the neutral to a neutral, ground and hot of another GFCI (GFCI removed)
measure from the Ground to a neutral, ground and hot of another GFCI (GFCI removed)
That should tell you if you have a good neutral, hot and ground. It is a starting point in trouble shooting this issue.
i want to reiterate that this all started when my blender blade got stuck and the GFCI tripped ... just in case that has something to do with it .. I am not connecting the blender to this outlet anymore although the blender is working fine on the other outlets
all 3 are levitrons - the first two were the "all white ones" with a green indicator on them and the 3rd that worked for a day was the one with a red and black button - all cost around $16 and are 15 amps
ok - i seem to have fixed the issue - at least for now. the switch is working now. my best guess on what went wrong is this - there is quite a bit of wire inside the box a little more than what I have usually seen in other switches .... this meant that the wires had to be coiled and pushed back into the box. And since the GFCI also outlet takes more space than a normal switch -- I am assuming that the naked ground wire had been touching the neutral point of the GFCI everytime I was pushing the GFCI in the box and against the coiled wires in the box --- it was perhaps sheer coincidence that the same thing happened every time I tried to replace the GFCI - except for the one time when it worked for a day, but eventually maybe due to the 'memory' or heat the ground wire started touching the neutral again after a day- I have no other explanation ... ... will let you know if it stops working - but thanks everyone esp MTN and Bria - i thought of this only because you were pointing towards the wires being short some where or the other .... i'm downgrading my skills from beginner level to idiot
ok - i seem to have fixed the issue - at least for now. the switch is working now. my best guess on what went wrong is this - there is quite a bit of wire inside the box a little more than what I have usually seen in other switches .... this meant that the wires had to be coiled and pushed back into the box. And since the GFCI also outlet takes more space than a normal switch -- I am assuming that the naked ground wire had been touching the neutral point of the GFCI everytime I was pushing the GFCI in the box and against the coiled wires in the box --- it was perhaps sheer coincidence that the same thing happened every time I tried to replace the GFCI - except for the one time when it worked for a day, but eventually maybe due to the 'memory' or heat the ground wire started touching the neutral again after a day- I have no other explanation ... ... will let you know if it stops working - but thanks everyone esp MTN and Bria - i thought of this only because you were pointing towards the wires being short some where or the other .... i'm downgrading my skills from beginner level to idiot :)
Amit... don't be downgrading your skills to idiot... upgrade to learning more new stuff. Actually, you tested and analysed things very well.
(Don't want to rain on a sunny day, but I still think you have/had a bad/poor/loose splice in the box. It may have justled back to a good connection and may function fine forever now,,,,, but I don't think a neutral ground contact would not stop your GFI from resetting (and immediately tripping).,,, this is to the best of my knowledge,,, I'm not intimately familiar with the electronics in a GFI.
Our previous thought of a neutral/ground short was before we knew that the GFI would not reset momentarially.
No no no !! it stopped working again !! i ran the microwave for about 15 seconds and it stopped. the green light on the gfci is not lit up (neither green nor red) i am pressing the reset button hard but it does not click - im back to square 1
Amit.... We x-posted when I thought you had it working.
Now I find more possibly indictive evidence you have a week/tentative /poor splice/connection somewhere.
When you have a weak tentative connection and under load (microwave) the connection/splice heats up and can break.
The fact that it appears you have no power to the gfi recep (no light and will not reset momentarily) indicates to me the liklyhood of a poor splice (wire nut) and especially with a crowded box, seems to me that that would be the likely location. (You never answered me whether your GFI feed is off a pigtail)
I think BRI suggested putting in a regular receptical... simple enough, and then we'll have a little more indication if you have a loss of power, or a ground fault.
If the regular recep fails... we will know you have a loss of power. If it works, we will still not know for certain the issue.
i am traveling for next 2 days so will not be able to put the regular outlet to test, but here's a photo of my testing the voltage in the wires after the the outlet jas stopped working - it is showing the correct volts..
I also see the GFCI is being used in isolation, i.e. there are no downstream outlets running off of the load side of the GFCI.
A GFCI will not reset due to a few conditions.
1) no power, without power the reset cannot latch
2) fault condition,
(a) ground fault exists (inbalance between hot and neutral currents)
(b) neutral and ground are shorted (GFCI detects this as a fault and trips
(c) neutral corruption on load neutral (when a load side neutral is
inadvertently combined with other circuit neutrals in a downstream box
Since yours seems to be an intermittent issue it seems to suggest your wiring is correct except maybe you have some loose connections somewhere that are arcing under load.
It is possible (but highly unlikely) your microwave is creating noise on the AC lines that is playing havoc in the GFCI circuitry but I think this is a long shot as GFCI circuits are very mature and noise immune. Regardless your problems seems to persist even when oven is off.
So I'd look for a loose wirenut upstream or maybe a fractured wire beneath the insulation at a sharp bend. If the box is metal maybe someone cranked down on the NM cable clamp too hard such that it has pinched through the insulation to the conductor. If it was on the white line that would create a neutral to ground fault but no arcing.
thanks Curious for the explanation - its helps me understand gfc better. yes, most people are pointing to some fault in wire/ connections... will put a regular outlet and see -- it will at least tell me if it an 'arc' / spliced wire/ loose wire nut related issue on hot or neutral
OK so I checked the war teach between neutral and ground and hot within this OK and with another outlet ... here are the results I'm getting ... I took a video while doing these tests but I realize that this site doesn't allow us to upload videos
A. within the same outlet:
hot to neutral 82V
hot to ground 122V
ground to neutral 29V
B. between this outlet and the other one
1. hot of other and neutral of this 142V
2. neutral of other and hot of this 122V
3. neutral of other and neutral of this 29V
also after I put the outlet back into the wall, I was able to reset it - so I measured the workdays again this time in the outlet - now it is showing me 122V between neutral and hot and negligible between neutral and ground. The only thing I did in between was that I had switched off the main breaker off and then on in order to put the outlet back
also after I put the outlet back into the wall, I was able to reset it - so I measured the workdays again this time in the outlet - now it is showing me 122V between neutral and hot and negligible between neutral and ground. The only thing I did in between was that I had switched off the main breaker off and then on in order to put the outlet back
yes MTN - i had tested it before and it was fine --- it is fine now as well after i have put the outlet back
i am now beginning to think that the problem is in one of the other appliances i have on this circuit - my washer dryer and dishwasher ... next time the gfci fails, i will unplug them one by one to see if anything changes
There is nothing that can occur in the upstream appliances that would cause you to have an intermittent voltage, or no voltage on the last outlet. It is more likely that in one of the upstream devices you have a poor connection, and it revealed itself when your blender locked up and overloaded the circuit.
Based on your test reading finding voltage between the ground and neutral, it's a fair bet that a neutral wire in an upstream box is poorly spliced, or backstabbed into the receptacle.
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