Good Morning,
One of the tasks in getting our new house up to speed was to replace broken or non-working GFCI Outlets. You know those with a mini-circuit breaker which are found by or near water sources like in bathrooms and kitchens.
When our house was inspected, about 5 of them failed the test. We would trip them and could not reset them. So I bought 5 replacement outlets, about $10 a pop and prepared to replace the ones we would ultimately use most often first and then get the rest.
An odd thing happened when I worked to replace them. Some of them, after being replaced, would not reset after I tripped them. So I started thinking about faulty new outlets. In my thinking I started checking the other outlets and found that some of the outlets were also tripped. So I reset them, and not only did the one I reset start working, but so did the one I just installed. They were actually tied to each other. The one I tripped would then actually trip multiple outlets (some not even in the same room or floor, etc.). For example, a GFCI outlet outside the house is tied to one on the second floor in one of the bathrooms.
What an odd way to wire them. It turned out I only needed 3 replacement outlets, not 5, because they were not actually broken, I just did not know how they worked.
How many other facets of our life do we confuse and try to ‘fix’ when what is really going on is that we just don’t understand how they are wired or how they work?
Some of it comes down to our innate impatience. You know the instant gratification culture we live in.
Some of it comes from our ignorance, that if it does not work the way we want it to work, or the way we believe it to work, then it must be wrong.
What if we took the time to ask those additional questions, like, if this is not working, what could be causing it, besides, ‘it’s broken’.
We may find that not everything is as messed up as we think it is, and we may actually find out something we did not know before, like tying multiple GFCI outlets together helps protect not only the one outlet but multiple outlets simultaneously and decreases the chances that someone is going to get electrocuted.
It may not be broken. Maybe we just don’t understand it.
Enjoy!
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