GFCI Outlet Wiring Question

[Alan]

Hi,

I have an outside outlet that is not GFCI. I wish to add a GFCI outlet. Normally this would be no problem as the wiring is pretty straight forward. However, on this particular outlet, the upper outlet (of the two) is wired to a switch inside the house and the lower outlet is always on. So instead of having ground (copper), neutral (white) and hot (black) to wire, I have ground, neutral, hot and a red wire which I assume is a second hot.

How do I handle this? I wish to keep the outlet the way it is today with one switched and one always on.

Alan

[CL (dnoyeB) Gilbert]

is the switch fed by a circuit that leaves the outlet, or is it fed seperately? if its fed seperately, try putting the gfci somewhere that it can feed both of those circuits and then you can use a regular outlet outside as it is now. you can also do a gfci circuit breaker I believe. Not sure what is code though.

[Alan Whitehouse]

Unfortunately, the outlet and switch come straight from the breaker and there is no other outlet upstream that I can put the GFCI on.

Any other suggestions?

[gfretwell]

They make GFCI receptacle/switch combos but the local BORG may not have them. Try an electrical supply house if you can't find one at the big box.

[FDR]

Replace the breaker with a GFCI breaker

[Salty Thumb]

"Alan" wrote in news:HD7Je.8099$ [e-mail]:

Assuming you want a GFCI protected outlet with one switched and one unswitched receptacle in the same gang, unless you can find a seperately wireable GFCI, I think you are stuck. On a normal outlet, there is a tab you can break to seperate the outlets, the cheap GFCI I just looked at didn't have anything obvious.

[trader4]

"They make GFCI receptacle/switch combos but the local BORG may not have them. Try an electrical supply house if you can't find one at the big box"

That doesn't solve the problem. What he has is an outlet that is wired so that one half of the outlet is wired direct, while the other half is wired to a switch somewhere else. This is fairly common. The only solutions are to either put one GFCI in another upstream outlet that feeds both, put one GFCI upstream in both circuits, or put in a GFCI breaker. I think the latter is the easiest and best.

[Beachcomber]

Another solution that should meet your requirements assuming that what you said is true, they are on one circuit with no other outlets. (I am assuming that the one circuit includes both the switched and unswitched outlets).

Install a GFCI outlet near your breaker panel (you can never have enough outlets right?) Use the circuit that feeds your existing outside circuit and loop the protected load side of the GFCI to the outdoor outlet. Every outlet on that circuit will then receive GGCI protection. Make sure that you also have protective ground and neutral continuity.

Beachcomber

[Alan Whitehouse]

Looks like I will go with a GFCI breaker at the panel. Thanks for the advice though.

Alan