I listened to Mike's webinar yesterday with interest as it related to a job I'm working on currently. We have a customer that bought an older house and sent us the Home Inspectors report, asking us if we could work on correcting some of the electrical issues in the house before they moved in.
One of those issues was that the main floor area has 2-prong outlet and should be changed out to 3-prong outlets. I told them it can be done if we can install a GFCI receptacle at the head of each circuit that would protect the other 3-prong outlets downstream. They would need to be labeled as per 406.4D "No Equipment Ground" and "GFCI Protected".
The current wiring in this portion of the house is 2-wire braided NM cable.
The issue I'm concerned with is, lets take the kitchen counter area for an example, I changed out the receptacle on the left side of the sink, putting in a GFCI receptacle. That then feeds over to the receptacle on the right side of the sink, which I changed out for a 3-prong receptacle. That all seems good to me, as it relates to the counter-top receptacles near the sink being GFCI protected. What I'm worried about is I know they want to correct the issues like this in the house, and get moved into the house. I also know they want to live in the house for a year or so and then refinance the house to include some student loans that the HO has into the mortgage, so I know when they do this the house will probably go through another home inspection at that time.
I'm worried that the Home Inspector will stick his GFCI plug tester into the left (GFCI) receptacle and it will red flag that receptacle as an "Open Ground", and the right 3-prong receptacle will give him an "Open Ground" response, but neither one of them will respond when he hits his 'test' button on his plug tester, as there's no EGC for the tester to simulate a fault to ground and trip the GFCI. Both receptacles will be labeled properly, but I can already anticipate that a Home Inspector will red flag this situation and it will come back to haunt us a year from now.
What opinions do any of you have about this situation?
Thanks for your responses,
and thanks Mike for the informative webinar (which can still be listened to after the actual recording!)
One of those issues was that the main floor area has 2-prong outlet and should be changed out to 3-prong outlets. I told them it can be done if we can install a GFCI receptacle at the head of each circuit that would protect the other 3-prong outlets downstream. They would need to be labeled as per 406.4D "No Equipment Ground" and "GFCI Protected".
The current wiring in this portion of the house is 2-wire braided NM cable.
The issue I'm concerned with is, lets take the kitchen counter area for an example, I changed out the receptacle on the left side of the sink, putting in a GFCI receptacle. That then feeds over to the receptacle on the right side of the sink, which I changed out for a 3-prong receptacle. That all seems good to me, as it relates to the counter-top receptacles near the sink being GFCI protected. What I'm worried about is I know they want to correct the issues like this in the house, and get moved into the house. I also know they want to live in the house for a year or so and then refinance the house to include some student loans that the HO has into the mortgage, so I know when they do this the house will probably go through another home inspection at that time.
I'm worried that the Home Inspector will stick his GFCI plug tester into the left (GFCI) receptacle and it will red flag that receptacle as an "Open Ground", and the right 3-prong receptacle will give him an "Open Ground" response, but neither one of them will respond when he hits his 'test' button on his plug tester, as there's no EGC for the tester to simulate a fault to ground and trip the GFCI. Both receptacles will be labeled properly, but I can already anticipate that a Home Inspector will red flag this situation and it will come back to haunt us a year from now.
What opinions do any of you have about this situation?
Thanks for your responses,
and thanks Mike for the informative webinar (which can still be listened to after the actual recording!)
