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GFCIs, you need them in your house. Hey, DIY Nation! It's Jeff with Home Repair
Tutor, and in this quick video I'm going to share with you how to replace a GFCI in your
bathroom. But that's not the only place you need it
in your home. So check the codes in your local area.
All right. Stay tuned. You're going to get a lot of great tips here. Let's get started.
Before replacing an outlet, always test to make sure that there's power running to it.
I highly recommend using a voltage detector like this one. It costs about $16, and any
DIY should have one in their toolbox. Simply turn on the voltage detector by pressing
down on the button—or depending on the one that you have it may be a little bit different.
Then place it into the hot slot of your outlet. If it lights up like that, that means that
there's power running to this outlet. Now you can go ahead and turn off the power at
the circuit breaker. Once the circuit breaker's turned off, now
you can test the outlet again using your voltage detector. Stick the voltage detector into
the hot slot, which is the short slot. Then, just to double check in case somebody wired
this outlet incorrectly, test the neutral slot and the ground slot. Nothing. Okay, good.
Now I know that there's no energy coming to this.
Now it's okay to unscrew the cover plate screws. Just turn them counterclockwise. Now you can
remove the screws that hold the outlet to the electrical box. Again, turn the screws
counterclockwise. Now what you want to do is pull the outlet
out from the electrical box using the metal tabs. Make sure not to touch the side of the
outlet just in case, for some reason, it's still energized.
With your voltage detector, double check that there's no electricity running to the outlet
by placing it on top of the hotwires. Now it's safe to... Just kidding.
All right, now you can pull the outlet the
entire way out as far as it'll go. I'm going to remove both hotwires.
So I'm going to remove the hotwires first. Then I'm going to remove the neutral wire
second. And finally, I'm going to disassemble the ground wire last.
I capped off all the wires. And I separated them based on their pairings. So this hot
and this neutral belong together. And this hot and neutral belong together.
Now what I need to do is figure out which set of wires are the load wires and which
set are the line wires. The load wires are wires that carry electricity from this outlet
downstream to other outlets. The line wires are wires that actually carry electricity
from the source—so for example, another outlet or the panel—to this outlet. So we
need to figure out which wires are the line wires and which are the load wires.
My guess is that these are the line wires—again the wires that are carrying electricity to
the box. Why is that my guess? Well, my electric panel is below us in the garage. And these
set of wires are coming up. So chances are this could be the source, the electrical source.
But that's not always the case. So what I'm going to do is turn the electricity back on
now that these wires are capped and away from each other, and test which set actually has
electricity running to them. With the electricity back on and my voltage
detector handy, now I'm going to test to see which are the line wires and which are the
loads. Check this out. Put your voltage detector up against the hotwire,
and sure enough, the one on the bottom here, that is the line wire. These are the line
wires that carry electricity into the electrical box.
Now just to double check, look. Nothing. No electricity going to this hotwire here. So
these set of wires are the load wires. Before working on these wires again, make
sure you turn the electricity off at the circuit breaker. Don't forget to do that. And double
check that it's off using your voltage detector. I'm going to replace the existing GFCI with
a Nightlight/ GFCI outlet. A few things about this.
Number one, it's tamper resistant. Most electrical codes require this now. So make sure you get
a tamper resistant outlet or GFCI. Secondly, I chose 15 amps because it's on
the 15-amp breaker. You'll always want to choose a slim-fit GFCI so that it can fit
into a standard-sized electrical box. You always want to check to make sure that
your electrical box is deep enough for the GFCI to fit into and that there's plenty of
space in that box so that the wires aren't scrunched up.
If your box is older and you want to replace it, you can get a remodel box like this one
here. This is 20 in3, plenty deep for the GFCI to fit into.
The cool part about remodel boxes is the fact that they're easy to install. They come with
these little wings on them. And you just tighten down the screw that's attached to the wing,
and eventually it cinches up to the drywall. So pretty great concept.
Let's take a look at the back of the GFCI. Few things here that'll help out beginners.
Number one, it's really nice that they show you how long to cut the copper wire that will
fit into the terminals. Look right here. Pretty sweet, right? So they give you a gauge as
to how long that wire should be. Also, they show you where the line wires—again, the
wires that are coming from the power source—should go.
So line wires go into these slots. Here's your brass terminal. Yeah, that's the brass
terminal. And this is the silver terminal. Almost all GFCIs—probably all of them, I
don't know; all the ones that I've bought—have a little yellow sticker that goes on the low
terminals. So if you only have one set of wires going into your electrical box, you
don't need to use the load terminals. But in this case, I have both line and load terminals
so I am in fact going to take that sticker off. It kind of feels like tearing the tag
off of a mattress, like you shouldn't be doing it. But in this case, yes, I am going to do
it because I have both line and load wires. Because there are two sets of wires coming
into the electrical box, I had two ground wires. What I need to do—because I only
have one ground screw on the GFCI—is pigtail a third wire that I just happen to have onto
these two ground wires. I'm going to take all three ground wires,
use a pair of linesman's pliers, and twist them together. Then I'm going to add the appropriate-sized
wire nut. Now I'm going to create a loop using my combination
strippers. Tilt that loop back just slightly to create a question mark. Then I'm going
to slide that loop over the ground terminal. I want the loop to be around the ground terminal
so that when I tighten it clockwise, it will tighten up the loop.
Now I can tighten up the ground terminal with my screwdriver. Again, always make sure that
your loop is going in the clockwise direction so that when you tighten your screw or your
terminal, it tightens the wire. And of course, make sure you wire the new
GFCI, not like me wiring the old GFCI instead of the new one. Ugh. Oh my gosh.
Now it's time to wire the load wires. All you do is stick the neutral into the neutral
slot or you can wrap it around the terminal. In this case, I'm just going to wire it right
into the slot and then tighten the screw. So white goes with silver; black goes with
gold. And I'm going to do the same thing for the line wires. So I'm going to take the white
and screw it into the silver terminal. And then finally, the last wire is the hot
or black wire. I'm going to screw that into the gold terminal.
Now one thing I want to note here: Always make sure that your wires—before you enter
them into any slot or into any terminal—are not nicked or frayed. If they are, cut them
off according to the gauge on the back of the GFCI that I showed you. And get a nice
fresh piece of wire. Now I'm not happy with how much the copper
is showing here. So I'm going to try to get that wire into the terminal a little bit more.
Now that you're done wiring the GFCI, try to gently—as much as possible, really—push
the wires back into the electrical box. And then finally you can screw the outlet
onto the electrical box by tightening the screws clockwise.
Add your faceplate, and you're finished! Oh, and one more tip: Don't over-tighten the
screws to the faceplate. The faceplate will crack and break. Yes, I'm talking from experience.
Now it's time to turn the electricity back on and test the GFCI.
Press the reset button on the GFCI. If it stays in place, you're work is good, and you've
wired the GFCI the right way. You can also test it by pressing the test button, and the
reset button should pop out. But in order for the GFCI to work, you need to have the
reset button pressed in. Well that's it. That's how you wire a GFCI
in your bathroom. Remember, you need GFCIs at least here in the States. You need them
in bathrooms, kitchens, basements, garages, and outside. So those are a few places that
you should definitely have GFCIs. If you have a question about his project,
please let me know. I'd be more than happy to help you out. I may not have all the answers,
but I'll give it my best shot. Remember, if you haven't already done so,
you can do a few things for me. If you really enjoyed this video, you can subscribe to my
YouTube channel 'cause a new video comes out pretty much every single Friday. And you can
subscribe to my newsletter over at HomeRepairTutor.com because you're going to get a ton of great
tips to help you save money with your own home repair projects, prevent you from feeling
overwhelmed, and just give you a lot of great juicy details on projects that I do weekend,
week out. So until the next video, I hope you have a
great day. And I'll talk to you soon!