Garage on bathroom GFCI

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McLintock

McLintock

Senior Member
Location
USA
Occupation
Electrician
went on a service call yesterday they had no power in their attached one car garage. So I get there and start looking and no breakers trip, panel not labeled, all wires I can see in the basement look good. While am doing this in the basement customer uses bathroom and reset GFCI, unknown to me, I go back into the garage and my plug tester is on. So I decided to push the GFCI button on the tester and it went off. So I start looking for one in the garage or outside, could not find one. Ask the customer about where they have GFCI’s in the house, they said the only one in the whole house is in the bathroom and I just reset it.

So one GFCI in the whole house and the garage was on with the bathroom, the house was built in early 80’s. I ran a new line out to the garage and put GFCI’s in garage and kitchen and a new one in bathroom, it looked like it was from the 80’s.


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Yeah, I remember those days, the GFCI receptacle could be anywhere.
 
It was permitted back then and is common here too. I'm often amazed at the lengths contractors would go to avoid purchasing a seperate GFCI receptacle for the garage and tap off the bathroom circuit at the other end of the house.
 
infinity said:
It was permitted back then and is common here too. I'm often amazed at the lengths contractors would go to avoid purchasing a seperate GFCI receptacle for the garage and tap off the bathroom circuit at the other end of the house.
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I think back then a GFCI receptacle cost about $40 which is probably closer to $100 in today’s dollars. Now they’re less than $15, or so. That’s probably why they avoided using more than the minimum when they could.
 
infinity said:
It was permitted back then and is common here too. I'm often amazed at the lengths contractors would go to avoid purchasing a seperate GFCI receptacle for the garage and tap off the bathroom circuit at the other end of the house.
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They had no idea what they would be spending several years later for AFCI's, at the time those GFCI's were like buying gold.
 
tom baker said:
The first GFCI I purchased in 1978 cost $35. Someone said here contractors would move from house to house
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Then $35 was a lot of money, these days $35 won't buy squat. I used to like to put the bathrooms and exterior receptacles together, the exterior receptacles are rarely used, & gave the bathroom a 20A receptacle before it was required, plus made the GFCI receptacle easy to find.
 
It was very common in Track homes to start at the garage location main panel, hit the first receptacle box with a GFI on closest common garage/house wall, then continue through to the bathrooms and finally end at the front and back patio. Maybe its a California thing.
 
My 1996 house had master bath, garage and one outlet outside near the front door on the same GFCI receptacle in the master bath. It didn't trip too many times, but when it did it was something I was doing in the garage and I was annoyed.
 
Another C10 said:
It was very common in Track homes to start at the garage location main panel, hit the first receptacle box with a GFI on closest common garage/house wall, then continue through to the bathrooms and finally end at the front and back patio. Maybe its a California thing.
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Did one service call where the GFCI for the kitchen was in the basement on the opposite side of the house of the panel and the kitchen


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I think all of us "old timers" have spent time on "hide and seek" for GFCI receptacles.
I have found them behind pictures & furniture. The worst I recall was a GFCI receptacle under a mobile home (shallow crawl space) for heat tape and it fed the bath receptacles.
 
augie47 said:
I think all of us "old timers" have spent time on "hide and seek" for GFCI receptacles.
I have found them behind pictures & furniture. The worst I recall was a GFCI receptacle under a mobile home (shallow crawl space) for heat tape and it fed the bath receptacles.
Click to expand...
Seen that before too in a mobile home. It would make more sense to me to run the opposite direction but it wasn't.
 
Little trick, if dead receptacle in a location that should require GFCI, check continuity between N and EGC. If open it very possible there is upstream tripped GFCI because receptacle type GFCI's typically open both the hot and the neutral when they trip. That is at least a sign to look for a hidden GFCI before starting to do some deeper troubleshooting
 
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