Can you install gfci without ground

And if you have several un-grounded outlets throughout the home, this can result in replacing a lot of wiring. Are you looking for a professional home inspection company in the Colorado area? Look no future as Scott Home Inspection is a family-owned multi-inspector company with over five star google reviews.

Have a look at our inspection services here. The easiest and most cost-effective solution available would likely be to add a GFCI protected outlet on the first outlet in this circuit. These outlets are considered safe to install on an un-grounded circuit, and replaces those inconvenient 2 prong outlets.

Also, if installed on the first outlet of the circuit, other outlets down-line on this circuit would also be protected which makes it cost-effective. This can also be done by changing out the breaker at the electrical panel with a GFCI protected breaker. This is also a very good option, but these breakers are typically times more costly than a GFCI outlet.

Breakers with GFCI protection installed at the main panel. A GFCI outlet or breaker can detect when more current is coming in on the hot wire than is exiting on the neutral wire, and will shut off the circuit quickly before the current can stray to alternate paths.

It should be noted that the GFCI outlet or breaker does not actually create a path to ground, nor does it make this a grounded outlet. It simply makes the un-grounded outlet safer. At Scott Home Inspection, our inspectors are trained to be on the lookout for these types of issues, and many others. If you hire us to inspect prior to purchase , we will inform you beforehand on the wiring types in the home, and whether or not the outlets are grounded.

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Note that GFCIs do nothing about a human getting between hot and neutral. But that is highly improbable with good equipment design.

GFCI is not a receptacle, it's a protection system. Any GFCI device can protect a downline part of a circuit. GFCI receptacles protect their own sockets, obviously. Anyway, GFCI receps give you the choice whether to protect the downline or not. If you don't want to protect a downline, you use only the "Line" terminals - and they are designed to accept 2 wires check the instructions.

If you do, then you remove the warning tape and use the "Load" terminals. The reason for the "No Equipment Ground" label is to warn users that there is no ground to assist in surge suppression. This can be a threat to electronics. Consider what happens when a wire comes loose inside an appliance and touches the case metal case.

In the design of a "Class 1" appliance this would be considered a "single fault condition". If there is a proper ground connection then current will flow through the ground connection and cause a trip almost immediately. Since most items are not being touched most of the time, the chances are it will disconnect the fault before anyone gets a shock.

If there is no ground connection then there will initially be no trip, the case of the appliance will remain live until someone or something touches it. Only after they have touched it and are getting a shock can the GFCI detect there is a problem and disconnect the power.

In most cases, it disconnects the current before the shock becomes fatal but it would still have been vastly preferable not to have had the shock in the first place.

So why do codes in the USA allow fitting 3 pin GFCIs, in place of regular 2 pin outlets in retrofit applications but not in new installations? Because it's a lesser evil.

In the real world people will use their electrical appliances even if that means cutting off the earth pin or using a cheater plug. I had most of them grounded for the sake of the computers, but there were two or three where it was extra difficult to fish a ground wire and they installed ungrounded GFCI outlets.

House built circa , this work done in or so. Others have explained well why this works, and the limitations, so I won't repeat that; just giving a data point that it is done by licenced professional electricians.

Here are several common failure scenarios and the behavior of various grounding configurations. Red is bad. Yellow is undesirable as it employs the user to trip the GFCI but it does so quickly and without injury.

Referring to the Question we are moving from an entirely red column to a slightly yellow one. A good investment for just swapping out some outlets. There are other situations where a ground is needed eg some medical devices, surge arrestors, etc. I have not tried to account for those. GFCI does not need a connection to Earth to work. If you put a GFCI in your main electrical panel, it measures the difference in current between Live and Neutral wires, and if that difference exceeds a threshold like 30mA, it will trip.

The idea is, under normal conditions, all the current that flows from the power company's cable through the live wire then flows through the various appliances in your home then back through the neutral wire.

If there is a difference between these two currents, it means some current is returning through a path that it shouldn't take, for example through someone's fingers, their body, their feet, the floor, then through Earth, then back to the power company's transformer neutral which is usually connected to Earth.

Or something like that. So it trips. If the appliance is earthed, and the earth wiring in the house works properly, then this causes a current to flow in the Earth wire instead of returning via the neutral wire, and the GFCI trips before someone touches the dangerous device. If the appliance is not earthed or there is no Earth in the house then that won't happen, but the GFCI will still save your skin if you touch the appliance and get zapped.

In this case you act as the Earth conductor, and you get zapped, but only for about 10 milliseconds. In theory, a GFCI does NOT protect from electrocution when touching both live and neutral, because in this case there is no way to distinguish a finger from a legit electrical load consuming current.

However, if you are standing barefoot on a somewhat conductive floor, enough current will still leak through your feet to make it trip. Same if you dump the hairdryer in the tub, and the tub is earthed, it should trip. So, basically, if you don't have Earth, the GFCI will not provide an early warning when an appliance is unsafe, but it will still protect you from surprise electrocution.

But it is not a magic bullet nor idiot proof. Here is the edited NEC section that allows GFCI protection for 3 wire receptacle replacement for ungrounded receptacles, note most carefully the Informational Notes at the end.

Where attachment to an equipment grounding conductor does not exist in the receptacle enclosure, the installation shall comply with D 2 a , D 2 b , or D 2 c. Informational Note No. Informational notes remind you to refer to other codes or parts of this code that have bearing.

Note 1 generally refers to NEC Listed or labeled equipment shall be installed and used in accordance with any instructions included in the listing or labeling.

So if you have a window AC unit, and the user instructions which are part of the UL Listing or tag on the cord says to use a grounded outlet then it is not certified for use on an ungrounded circuit, and use of a labelled receptacle does not change that. NEC Electric needs to be updated. One electrician said GFCIs need to be used with grounded wires, which we don't have in most of the house.

The other electrician said GFCIs will still work without grounded wire. Not sure who to believe. Please help!!!

SBJ5, The second guy is not much of an electrician if he doesn't know that a GFI will absolutely work without a grounding conductor. In fact, as the first guy said, a GFI is a legal and safe 3-prong retrofit for circuits without a ground.

I think we all know she means the equipment ground and not the neutral. You first need to understand there are similar terms that need to be used properly.

A "grounded wire" or grounded conductor, is commonly called the neutral. A grounding conductor is commonly called the ground. So, with that said, yes, grounded wires neutrals are required for GFCIs to operate. Grounding conductors are not required. Not exactly. There are volt GFCIs that do not involve a neutral. The only necessary conductors for proper operation of a GFCI are the circuit conductors.

For volts, one of those conductors is the neutral. Stove on island without any ventilation. With or without the cowhide? The curse of Bermuda Grass wire grass. To put it simply, if you just have the two wires, black and white, the GFCI will work. In fact, a GFCI is recommended in this situation because it will provide protection even though you have no equipment ground.

A GFCI measures any current difference between the live and neutral wires. If they don't match, current is going somewhere it isn't supposed to and it trips. It doesn't require a ground to do that.

Most of the time you have a ground connection that unbalances the hot-neutral through the GFCI, but it is possible to be isolated enough to not leak current to another path. The small testers do not have adequate precision in the 'leakage' current they simulate. They put a load from hot to ground to unbalance the current.

No ground, no current, but it has nothing to do with the GFCI working correctly. They put the unbalance around the sense coil between the hot and neutral. You can always use the method the guy I worked with used to use. Wire the white wire to the silver one. Remember, black to gold, white to white. Leave the ground terminal on the GFCI unconnected.

Reversing polarity is a code violation, so wire it properly. Turn the power back on, then carefully use a multimeter to find the live wires.

Connect one black wire to one white wire. If it measures 0 volts, try another combination until you find one that measures about volts.