GFCI question

[miggs76]

Ok--for all you electricians, if I have a regular electrical outlet, then plug in a GFCI adapter to it, then a power strip into that, would that be considered safe, or would it be better to hire an electrician to change the outlet from regular to GFCI?

[Fishie]

The only problem I've had with an adaptor is that sometimes during a surge it doesn't restore power.

 

The in wall gfci works fine after a power blip

[Mike Mann]

yea im an eletrician. what you did will be fine and anything after the GFCI is protected but fishie is also right it wont reset after power loss on its own like a normal GFI outlet would.

[miggs76]

yea im an eletrician. what you did will be fine and anything after the GFCI is protected but fishie is also right it wont reset after power loss on its own like a normal GFI outlet would.

Ok thanks!

[Coral Hind]

I would just change out the outlet. Changing out an outlet is a super easy DIY thing.

[smallreef]

Yep...the GFCI comes with instructions

[paul b]

I'm also an electrician, perfectly safe.

[Fishie]

It's pretty easy to change at the plug end...but I always thought that the fuse box also needs to be prepared to be gfci compliant for it to work correctly....

I may be wrong but maybe Mike or someone can answer that accurately

 

Mine labelled for gfci at all circuit boxes so I just had to swap the regular power outlet for a gfci one.

[Coral Hind]

Nothing inside the breaker panel needs to be changed to install a GFCI outlet as long as you match the amp rating of the new outlet to the existing breaker.

[Mike Mann]

Yea he's right you don't need to touch the breaker to put one in just make sure you turn it off when you do it. You can just have a GFCI breaker put in on that circuit and that whole circuit would be protected and you wouldn't haft to touch the plugs. It will be a little more expensive tho.

[treesprite]

yea im an eletrician. what you did will be fine and anything after the GFCI is protected but fishie is also right it wont reset after power loss on its own like a normal GFI outlet would.

 

This is only true of certain ones. I have one that will not reset and one that will reset. I guess you would have to do some research to find out which ones will and which ones won't (I don't know the brand of my resetting one and am not going to disconnect things to look at the back of it).