New GFCI will not reset.

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dj_a_2001

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I have a trouble-shooting question concerning a GFCI.
I am an electrician, and a buddy called me tonight and was having trouble with a GFCI that he had just installed in his house.

Details:
The existing circuit had a normal outlet and he wanted to install a GFCI.
The normal outlet worked fine.
The Branch Circuit to the outlet was a 12/2 romex
The branch Circuit was fed with a tandem 20-amp breaker.
The breaker had the correct voltage at the termination point.

He took out the standard recep and installed the GFCI.
When he flipped the breaker back on, the GFCI would not stay set. I guess it would never set at all.. Every time he would try to push the reset in it would not hold.

He tried a few other GFCI?s and they would not set either.

He then called me.

I told him to start with the basics. Unhook the 12/2 wires completely from all lugs in the panel. (Breaker,Neutral bar, groundbar) Fan out the your same conductors at the outlet box.
Do a continuity test between all the conductors with nothing tied between.
All conductors were open just as expected on a good circuit I guess.
I then had him verify he had the correct wires. He made a current loop with all wires. Hot and neutral tied together and then a continuity test. All wire combinations checked out. (He had continuity through the circuit)

This is where we are tonight.
I told him to take a short piece of romex and make a small branch circuit right at the panel. Hook up the GFCI. This thought process was just to see if you eliminate the existing field pulled romex maybe the GFCI would reset. If it would not reset at the panel, well, then I really don?t understand! Kind of grasping at straws but it seemed like a good test to maybe get my thinking heading in the right direction.

I also told him to hook up the branch circuit to another breaker and not the Tandem. I have thought about this, and cant see a problem with the breaker set up. Essentially it?s just a parallel point.
I honestly can?t see any problem with any of it. The solid state CT circuitry in the GFCI is just monitoring between the hot conductor and the grounded hot conductor and the only way the GFCI would trip is if there is a shunt going to ground or out another source. I guess the device is hanging in mid air at the outlet and is not touching anything.
Anyhow, I am stumped and have been thinking about it all night. I will probably go over to his house and do some tests myself tomorrow, but I thought I would pose the question. Heck, maybe I am totally forgetting about something. I can see if he couldn?t get it to trip out with a tester or something, as the tester shunts to ground and maybe the ground is bad, but not work at all?? Maybe three bad, new GFCI's?
Thanks for any advice. I will keep all posted if this is just not a no brainer on my part and I am being an idiot.
 
LarryFine said:
Make sure he's not using the 'load' terminals.
​
Click to expand...

That's what I am thinking, also.

Does the box contain 1, 2 or more romex's?
Very easy to fudge it up.
 
LarryFine said:
Make sure he's not using the 'load' terminals.​
Click to expand...


That would be my first guess. I believe that all new GFCI rec's are required to not turn on if they are wired incorrectly. The old ones would work but would not provide GFCI protection when mis-wired.
 
I'm with the others on this. This is usually the cause. In addition, and if you feel comfortable having your customer do this, have him land only the feed wires on the line side of the GFI and see if it works. Assuming it does, have him then land the load wires on the load side of the GFI. If it trips then you know there's something causing a ground fault somewhere down the line.
 
I'm with Larry too, though I answered a service call recently where two people could not manage to push the reset button in far enough for the thing to reset. I replaced it any way, I had to do something other than push the reset with the back end of my pencil:rolleyes: .

Here is a summery of a study NEMA did , if any one is interested.

http://www.cpsc.gov/volstd/gfci/AnalysisGFCI.pdf

Here is the whole thing

http://www.mikeholt.com/documents/freestuff/NEMA-GFCI-Field-Test-Survey-Report-January-2001.pdf
 
I'm thinking the same thing as the others. The reason for my thinking is that he said it was fed with a 12/2. If there are more wires in the box sometimes the neutrals can get crossed up.
 
This is a quote from the summery I linked to


Of the 211 non operational GFCIs, 90 were removed by an electrician and sent to​

UL for testing.
7 Among these recovered GFCIs, UL found 56% operated correctly in the​


laboratory after being correctly wired for line and load. The recovered GFCIs also
included some that were miswired (13 of 90 returned or 14%) as determined by the
electrician. Some of the other GFCIs that operated correctly at UL may have been
miswired without being detected by the electrician.​
8​



The report also presented the age distribution of the 90 recovered GFCIs. There
was no particular pattern.​
​
Click to expand...
​


(the 7 & 8 ) are foot note numbers)

Interesting that more than half were operational at the laboratory
​
 
I once got called out to a job by one of our combo inspectors, I was meeting him, the EC, and his helper. For Three days they had been trying to get a GFI outlet to work and couldn't. I walked up took one look and said "you have the line and load neutrals reversed. You should have seen the look on the EC's face. He said his helper looked at it and couldn't figure it out, he had looked at it twice and couldn't figure it out and they replaced the receptecale and didn't see it and I just walk right up and catch it.

Sometimes it's when we get tunnel vision and think we know what's wrong that makes it harder to find out what the real problem is.
 
Is this in the main structure (house) or is it in a detached garage? I ask because I have seen installations in detached garages where they bonded the neutral at the sub-panel in the garage. The GFCI receptacles would not reset and just plain would not work. I looked at the panel, saw the jumper for the neutral, took it off, and presto!!! everything worked just fine.
Just a thought.
 
I would guess something like half of the calls I get for problems people are having with our equipment involve a part installed incorrectly in the field, so I am not surprised that such a large percentage of failures were really improper installation.
 
When GFCIs first came out they made liars out of a lot of electricans, IE there were mistakes in the downstream wiring...
 
If it is correctly wired " which it may not be" line hot X load hot. He may just not be pushing and holding the reset in long enough. On some of the new "smart lock" gfi's they take a second to latch.
 
infinity said:
hillbilly said:
Should that matter?
Click to expand...

It matters if neutral for the multi-wire circuit is feeding thru the GFI instead of pig-tailed in the box with a tap to the GFI neutral connection.
If the neutral is fed thru the GFI, any load on the other leg of the multi-wire circuit will cause the gfi to trip.
If that load is continuous (clock, smoke detector, TV set, etc.) the GFI will never latch.
If that load is intermittent (light switched on, etc.) the GFI will trip any time the load is applied to the other leg of the multi-wire.

The OP said that the circuit was fed with a 2 pole breaker....may be a multi-wire circuit.

Just a thought
steve
Click to expand...
 
hillbilly said:
infinity said:
It matters if neutral for the multi-wire circuit is feeding thru the GFI instead of pig-tailed in the box with a tap to the GFI neutral connection.
If the neutral is fed thru the GFI, any load on the other leg of the multi-wire circuit will cause the gfi to trip.
If that load is continuous (clock, smoke detector, TV set, etc.) the GFI will never latch.
If that load is intermittent (light switched on, etc.) the GFI will trip any time the load is applied to the other leg of the multi-wire.

The OP said that the circuit was fed with a 2 pole breaker....may be a multi-wire circuit.

Just a thought
steve
Click to expand...


He did say tandem and not 2 pole breaker. He also said 12-2 as the feed so it does not appear to be a multiwire problem. My instincts tell me reversed line/load connection on the GFI or downstream neutral/ground connection
Click to expand...
 
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