Sharing my recent experience spending hours troubleshooting a problem with a GFCI receptacle downstream of a Jasco (GE Enbrighten) wall switch, as a PSA. Hopefully, this will help save time for others who run into a similar situation.
Anyone who’s worked with residential electric for awhile (myself as an avid DIYer) knows how finicky GFCI receptacles and circuit breakers can be. In my case, I had the following circumstances:
- Single pole (1-way) light switch in garage
- Switch cuts power on/off to GFCI wall receptacle
- Downstream of GFCI are soffit receptacles (exterior holiday lighting)
- Standard (old) circuit breaker
Recently and prior to installing the Z-Wave switch on this circuit, I had a contractor at the house who needed to plug-in a high-amperage device. I suggested they use this GFCI receptacle, and showed them how the switch worked. Again, this was prior to converting the switch from a “dumb” switch (switched hot only) to a Z-Wave switch. During the contractor’s presence, at some point their equipment tripped the GFCI, and after that the GFCI refused to power on or reset.
Here’s the fix I found for a mis-behaving GFCI receptacle downstream of a switch.
Bottom line: remove the switch from the equation!
- On the GFCI receptacle, remove the load wires and set them aside safely, so only the LINE wires are connected.
- Back at the up-stream switch, disconnect the hot and neutral (if relevant) wires from the switch. Direct-wire the hot wires together to allow current to pass directly from the circuit breaker to the GFCI receptacle.
- Power on the circuit.
- Press the reset button on the GFCI receptacle.
- Power off the circuit.
- Restore the LOAD wires to the GFCI receptacle for your downstream outlets.
- Restore the switch in between the circuit breaker and GFCI receptacle. Re-connect hot and neutral wires (if required).
- Restore power and test functionality of the GFCI receptacle and switch.
- Use a plug-in test tool to confirm no wiring faults are present.
Essentially, the only way I could get the GFCI to “reset” was by removing anything between it and the circuit breaker, so there was no way anything else could be creating a problem unless there was a wire issue (e.g. short circuit).
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More Scenario Details
Initially, I wasn’t sure how many circuits were passing through the 4-gang box, but I knew there were at least two (which turned out to be the correct answer).
One mistake I made was in replacing the GFCI and swapping out the old dumb switch with a Z-Wave Jasco paddle switch at the same time, and then turning power back on to test. If I had had the wisdom to start by replacing only the part that had just failed (the old GFCI receptacle), I may have figured out how to resolve the issue much sooner. Alas, I installed and removed the new switch, old switch, and GFCI receptacle numerous times before I figured it all out. In the end, I had to go back to a very basic circuit design to get it sorted.
During this whole process - up until I resolved it - I tried 3 different brand new GFCI receptacles, and regardless, they always refused to function. No green LED. Dead reset button and test button. I could tell the GFCI’s were in failsafe mode, but couldn’t understand why.
Using a multi-meter, I was able to confirm all the wires coming to the GFCI receptacle appeared to be functioning correctly. Hot was the proper voltage, I tested ground by jumping it to another ground on a separate circuit (via the multi-meter in between), which confirmed a round trip through the service panel and two different circuits. Good ground. I probed the neutral. No issues. So, how could the receptacle continue behaving as if it detected a failsafe condition?
I started thinking there might be a micro-voltage slip somewhere that I was not seeing on the multi-meter, but the GFCI was detecting. One thought I had was that technically, these Jasco Z-Wave switches draw a small amount of current constantly via the neutral wire, and I was wondering if that could be upsetting the power balance from the viewpoint of the GFCI receptacle.
The circuit breaker for this circuit was a plain breaker (no GFCI, AFCI protection, etc.). Therefore, I knew the cause could not be having > 1 GFCI on the same circuit (which should not be a problem with post-2015 GFCI’s but might be with pre-2015’s… my breaker was manufactured in 2007).
Long story short, I ended up doing the following by the time it was all said and done:
- Replaced GFCI receptacle with a brand new one.
- Confirmed behavior of every related wire via multi-meter / continuity and voltage tests.
- Replaced old dumb wall switch with brand new Jasco Z-Wave paddle switch.
- Replaced old “standard” circuit breaker with combination GFCI/AFCI circuit breaker (this works fine so long as you have new-ish circuit breaker and receptacle).
- Examined neutral and hot wires in the 4-gang box. I traced every wire, including travelers to a 3-way switch in another part of the house with connections in this gang box. Confirmed although I had multiple branch circuits passing through the 4-gang box, that they were wired correctly (i.e. no crossed or combined neutrals or hots across more than one circuit). Confirmed all grounds were in fact grounded to the service panel.
I hope I save someone else quite a bit of trouble in dealing with a “faulty” GFCI receptacle. The fix turned out to be very simple. I never knew there was such as a thing as doing a "hard reset’ for one. It’s been flawless since implementing my solution.
I’ve read other GFCI topics on this forum, but none seemed to address this specific scenario, and the other threads I found were very old.