hubmonkey

Okay so I have a question about the wiring in my house. No I am not trying to rewire my house but there is something that I do not understand....

My Bathrooms and kitchen do not have GFCI outlets. I have a GFCI breaker in the breakerbox but I cannot find what it is attached to. It is labeled bathroom outlet, I trip it and it does not turn the power off to the bathrooms, kitched, Garbage disposal, dishwasher, or anything. I looked at the panel and can find the 20amp breakers to those outlets. The GFCI breaker has 2 white wires that connect to it. On comes out of the ceiling, via romex, and one attaches the the neutral bar (not sure if this is the right terminology or not) in the breaker box. What is this breaker for?

Hub

spunbearing

The GFCI breaker SHOULD power your kitchen or bath. It is possible that it is for the garage or exterior outlet also. It could also be that the breaker is not shutting off when you trip it. Get a voltmeter and check voltage at the lug where the hot wire (black) attaches to the breaker.You want to test from the neutral bus or the ground bar to the hot lead on the breaker. This should trip the breaker.First thing to do is to find out if the breaker is working. Then you need to figure out what it powers. It's possible that they connected the wrong hot lead. You can also plug a radio (or something that makes noise) into the kitchen or bathroom outlets and just flip breakers until you find the correct circuit. If you need to install GFCI outlets let me know and I can tell you how to test and conect line side/load side etc.

hubmonkey

Well what I did to see what it powered was to pop the breaker out of the box. It has no black wires going into the GFCI breaker, Only 2 white wires. I found the breakers that power the bath and kitchen and they were 2 seperate standard GE 20amp breakers. I can flip those off and and lose power to those outlets.

The GFCI seems to not do anything at all. I pulled it out and checked every outlet and every switch in the house and everything works with that breaker being off and even popped out of the box.


EDIT: I am wanting to add GFCI outlets near water sources.


Hub

spunbearing

The black wire is probably twisted with one of the white wires and has a wire nut. Make sure that you check your exterior outlets for power when the breaker is out. On a standard GFCI outlet you have a line side and a load side. The line side is where the power feeds into the outlet. The load side powers and protects everything down circuit. In other words you can usually protect both bathrooms with one GFCI outlet. ( not always) You need to find out which lead in your box is hot and that will be your line side feed. Of course you need to clip the wires first before you test them or they will both be hot. The one that is fed off of the outlet will be your load side. If you don't need a load side ( if you are only protecting that one outlet) anything that feeds from the outlet that doesn't need to be protected can attach to the line side. If you have a washer/dryer for example on the same circuit as your kitchen you would only want to protect the kitchen outlet. You don't want any heavy appliances washer/ refrigerators etc. on the load side because the draw of the motors starting is enough sometimes to trip your GFCI and you will be constantly resetting it. Hopefully I am helping and not confusing you more. I'm not very good at explaining things.

hubmonkey

Okay here is what I just observed. The romex cable that comes into the box has 3 wires (i know you already know this but helps me explain) The white wire from that cable goes to the GFCI breaker. From the GFCI breaker it goes to the Neutral bar with another white wire. The black wire out of the same romex cable goes to another standard GE 20 amp breaker that snapped in the other side of the breaker box.

I am going to take a picture, that will prolly be too confusing but I will post it in a few minutes...

Here is a link to the picture, I left it full sized to see detail better....

http://www.roostingthedunes.com/Temp/breaker.jpg

spunbearing

That is probably your problem. It sounds like the black lead should go to the lug on the GFCI. You need your load neutral and load power both to be connected to the GFCI. On a standard GE you usually have a white pigtail which connects to the neutral bus. Then your load neutral connects to the left side lug right above your white pigtail. Then your load side power connects to the other lug on the right side.

hubmonkey

I edited my previous post with a link to the picture...

Hub

spunbearing

ok that one is a little bit different than the one that I have. It looks like your neutral is connected on the right side lug of the breaker. It's difficult to tell at the angle of the pic but it looks like there may be a left side lug and nothing is connected to it. ????? Can you tell who the manufacturer of the breaker is? The one that I am looking at is a siemans made for a GE panel. The problem is that many companies make GE style breakers. Murray, Bryant, Siemans etc. and all of them are basically the same but the connections are sometimes on different sides.

hubmonkey

The breaker is made by GE and the white romex is in the left lug that is labeled "load neutral" and the other white is hooked to lug labled "Neutral bar" and goes to the neutral bar.

Hub

spunbearing

ok so you should have an extra lug with nothing going to it. The black wire from the same romex bundle that goes to a separate breaker should be connected to the GFCI breaker.

spunbearing

I just looked at the pic again. It looks to me like the neutral is connected to the right lug. Can you get a closer shot of the actual lug connections on the breaker?

spunbearing

[IMG][/IMG]


Ok here is a shot that I just took of a GE style GFCI. There are two screw lugs. The one on the right (near my pinky finger) is the one that the black power lead goes to. The one on the left is where the neutral wire connects. Then the white pigtail connects to the neutral bus.

hubmonkey

Both whites are connected to the neutral side. I pulled the breaker and verified this. Nothing is connected to the black side.

The wire it bent to look like it is connected to the right lug.

Hub

hubmonkey

Okay yes the neutrals are wired correct, according to your picture and the black is wired to it's own breaker on the other side of the box..

Hub

spunbearing

Ok then it should be as simple as taking the hot lead off of the other breaker and connecting it to the right side lug on the GFCI breaker. There may have been a reason that they connected it wrong. Maybe the GFCI went bad and they just did that for temp power and never fixed it correctly. Hopefully all you have to do is connect that wire.