Yes. The other non-GFCI are also protected on the down-load side. They way they had it set up, they only had power to bottom half of the GFCI and nothing at all happening downstream! But we fixed it. Everything nice and shiny, power to all outlets, when GFCI is tripped the other outlets downrange are obediently non-powered. It's funny to look at.... The GFCI outlets with the test/reset and nice pretty green indicator light are the fartherest away from the sink on both sides! I'm sort of wondering if they didn't just grab outlets out of a grab bag and say, "Hey, 2 wite wars and 2 black wars on all of 'em, rite?" I've found all sorts of amazing things... like an underground romex run of about 150 feet to a "GFCI" outlet on the dock, which, upon opening up the "box" and pulling the face cover off, was completely rusted. As in, one huge rust chunk. Needless to say, that entire circuit has been disconnected...
Was the underground "romex" at least UF cable? (UF cable is rated for direct burial). It'd be at least one thing they did right and can be reused.
You'll be able to tell at one end or the other. (If you're talking of digging it up looking for markings.) Regular romex, the outer insulation is just a sleeve that your insulated wires are contained in. It really has no insulating value at all. UF cable on the other hand, the outer casing is moulded around the inner insulated (and uninsulated ground wire.) and is very much an insulator. Simple inspection of splice, or termination points will let you know what you have.
One of my sockets is wired all wrong. It's a socket on its own circuit that I don't think has ever powered more than TV-related stuff (and mostly just a TV and floor lamp, prior to us moving in with advanced technology like a DVD player). The hot and neutral are reversed. No idea what genius managed to put a single socket on a circuit and get it wrong but there you go. Needless to say it's on the list of things to fix, eventually....
I didn’t want to mess with GFCI. I replace regular switches all the time. I had an electrician friend replace my GFCIs.
Is it all that different to replacing a regular socket, other than you have to get the Line and Load cables the right way around?
With four wires, 2 black and two white (assuming the bare ground) you only have a limited number of possibilities before it finally works correctly!
Yes there is quite the difference. If the out let you're wanting to be protected isfirst or in the middle of a multi outlet circuit, you have the option of having only that one as a GFCI And the others a standard outlet, or, it and all the outlets AFTER the GFCI protected (through) the one GFCI outlet, Most new, in the box GFCI's have a pretty good instruction sheet in the box.
Isn't that just a matter of connecting the cables to the right terminals? As RK kinda said there are only so many ways to connect black to brass and white to silver.
Normally yes. But if you have two black wires and two white wires, Which of the two black wires go under which brass screws? Same with the white. Believe it or not, you can really screw that up.
Only options. A B C D C B A D A D C B C D A B Unless you start mixing black and white and silver and brass...
You connect one to Live and one to Load, making sure that the wires from each cable go to the same one? I can see that replacing a regular socket with a GFCI socket adds the issue of not necessarily knowing which is live and which is load but you can usually figure that out with a continuity tester, no?
On a standard outlet you have two brass, two silver screws. The two brass can be either line or load. Same with the silver. Makes no difference. Each set has a small "tie bar" which can be seen between the screw sets (the tie bars have the option of being removed for yet more options.) But with the GFIC outlets the two sets of screws are separated into line/load. A&B (brass and silver) on this line side powers the GFCI. While C&D is the load side which picks up power FROM the GFIC. Making all outlets after that protected by the ground fault. If following outlets were to be tapped onto A&B via wire nuts and bypass C&D then the circuit remains unprotected following the GFIC. So yes indeed it can get screwed up if you get the wrong white wire on the wrong silver screw. (Same for the blacks.
In theory but the black wire goes to a brass screw and the white wire goes to a silver screw. That cuts the options down quite a bit. If you take that restriction out it opens up a bunch more theoretical options but at that point you might as well also include different hairstyle results if you do the work without turning the circuit off first.
There's more options than you can shake a stick at actually. With one outlet with two sets of wires, off the top of my head, I can come up with ten options.