How To Change A Ground Fault Outlet

A gfci ground fault circuit interrupter is a special type of outlet that detects dangerous ground faults and immediately turns off the power to stop shocks.

How to change a ground fault outlet. You can change any of these to three prong outlets if you want but each one you change must bear the no equipment ground label. A regular outlet has two hot and two neutral terminals. Changing an outlet to a gfci. A gfci is an electrical safety device that can be installed in any standard ac receptacle box.

Replace the outlet. In many homes necessary circuit breakers and gfcis are already installed but they can stop working unexpectedly so it is important to know how to replace gfci outlets when this happens. This step is unusually specific. Plus installing a gfci outlet reduces the risk of electric shock helping ensure the safety of you and your family.

Any outlets that come after the gfi in the circuit will have ground fault protection. But it s certainly more cost effective to only replace a few outlets in your house since gfci outlets are a bit more expensive than traditional receptacles. With that said there s no harm in replacing every single outlet with a gfci outlet so when that outlet trips only that one outlet will go down without affecting any of the other outlets. These are common meaning you can connect to either of the two screws for the hot or neutral connection.

For the gfci outlet things get a little more interesting. What gfci outlets do is reduce the danger of deadly shock from faulty plug in cords and devices. You can replace almost any electrical outlet with a gfci outlet.