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navycop

navycop

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Nov 4, 2010
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Virginia Beach, VA 23454
I was having a party and tried to plug a radio in to the outlet on the side of the house. Nothing. Then I remembered sometimes the Christmas lites would go out and I had to reset the bathroom outlet. Was wondering if I could replace the outside outlets with outlets like in the bathroom? I know they would have to be "for wet locations" but do they even make them?
 
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sounds like your outside outlet is on the same circuit as your bathroom GFCI outlet.

you only need one GFCI outlet per circuit to protect it - I believe.
 
You could replace the outside outlet with a GFCI outlet, but you would need to re-wire the inside one in the bathroom to only operate locally instead of shutting down the entire circuit.
You may want to find out what is tripping it anyway. Sounds like something is shorting to ground. May just be a bad connection, but it could be any of the outlets on teh circuit.
 
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Building code requires outdoor and bathroom outlets to be protected by a "ground-fault-interrupt" (GFI). In these circuits, the first outlet (upstream from all others) has a GFI protector (the "test" and "reset" switches). It compares the current entering and leaving the lines. If there is a difference - meaning that the current is going to ground elsewhere (a "ground fault"), it trips and shuts off the flow. This keeps people from getting electrocuted in the bathtub or when grabbing wet extention cords.

Builders sometimes put all the bathroom and outdoor outlets on a single circuit. That way, they only have to install one GFI. You can't safely move the GFI outlet to another location - that leaves all the upstream outlets unprotected. You could rewire the outside outlets, putting them on a different circuit with its own GFI outlet, but that means you just have to go to a different location to reset it after a fault.

I hope that helps,
Eric
 
I think I need to go indepth with my question. I want to remove the outlet from the outside recepticale boxes. It appears to be just a regular outlet anyway except it is tied to the bathroom circuit. I want to go to a big box store and get outlets with the pushbuttons on them. Using the wires from the removed outlets hook up the GFCI outlets. Is this up to code? That way I do not have to go all over the house to fix a fault. I push one button on the "triped" outlet and I am done.
 
navycop said:
I think I need to go indepth with my question. I want to remove the outlet from the outside recepticale boxes. It appears to be just a regular outlet anyway except it is tied to the bathroom circuit. I want to go to a big box store and get outlets with the pushbuttons on them. Using the wires from the removed outlets hook up the GFCI outlets. Is this up to code? That way I do not have to go all over the house to fix a fault. I push one button on the "triped" outlet and I am done.
Click to expand...

Not sure if this is do-able. The way I understand it is you can only have one GFI per circuit. To have GFI on your outside outlet means you would have to remove the GFI outlet (replace it with a normal outlet) in the bathroom. The placement of the new GFI might make the bathroom outlets unsafe.
 
I would hire a licensed electrician to do the work since it is something that if done incorrectly can cause a fire or be very unsafe in the future. The cost will be worth it.
 
dbledsoe said:
You could replace the outside outlet with a GFCI outlet, but you would need to re-wire the inside one in the bathroom to only operate locally instead of shutting down the entire circuit.
You may want to find out what is tripping it anyway. Sounds like something is shorting to ground. May just be a bad connection, but it could be any of the outlets on teh circuit.
Click to expand...

Mike as said in this answer it looks like it is feed from the bathroom outlet. So if you take the bathroom outlet off the wall (power off) you will see on the back of the receptical, it will say line and load. This means the power coming into the box will go on the line in and the load is the one going to your outside plug, BUT it could be going somewhere else 1st like another bathroom or outside plug. You would have to trace this out with a meter(power off) If it is going to straight to the outside plug and nowhere else you could join the 2 blacks together with a pig tail and the 2 whites with a pig tail in the bathroom plug and connect it back to the line in on the back of the receptical and then go buy a new GFCI for you outside plug.

Lin.
 
nava1uni said:
I would hire a licensed electrician to do the work since it is something that if done incorrectly can cause a fire or be very unsafe in the future. The cost will be worth it.
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There are many jobs that a home owner should learn how to do himself, rather than pay someone. Swapping an outlet is one of them.
 
While adding a second GFI outlet to the circuit may not hurt anything, it also might not help. There's no guarantee which one will trip first.

You're much better off isolating the location of the ground fault and fixing that.

Regards,
Eric
 
I think I would find the GFI circuit, go to the panel box, replace the regular circuit breaker with a GFI breaker, then replace the GFI outlets with regular outlets. Then, when you trip the circuit, it would be reset at the breaker box, the same way you would reset any other breaker.

My electrician put my outdoor GFI circuits on the circuit with 5 bathroom GFI. A little rain on the outdoor Christmas lights was a real P.I.T.A. I finally rewired everything, but until then, the easy solution was changing the breaker.
 
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PenMan1 said:
I think I would find the GFI circuit, go to the panel box, replace the regular circuit breaker with a GFI breaker, then replace the GFI outlets with regular outlets. Then, when you trip the circuit, it would be reset at the breaker box, the same way you would reset any other breaker.

My electrician put my outdoor GFI circuits on the circuit with 5 bathroom GFI. A little rain on the outdoor Christmas lights was a real P.I.T.A. I finally rewired everything, but until then, the easy solution was changing the breaker.
Click to expand...

Panel Breaker $50.00 + dollars, GFCI plug $9.00 at most.

Lin.
 
As being a retired LSC manager for ah, say a few years,. I certaily woould take Cindy's advise......electrcity is nothing to be playing with......I have a freind who owneded his own "company" and was /is a linced electrican, he got hit with 5900 watts from a power line, he even had the boxed locked and tagged....as per code, here some had rewired down the line and it didn't show "a live line"
only my advise
 
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