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Are GFCIs now required in all unfinished portion of a house?

Home Improvement Asked by DMoore on March 11, 2021

I was really surprised that a city inspection did not pass based on regular outlets in an unfinished room in the basement. They are correctly jacketed and all of that stuff. They are simply requiring GFCI outlets on everything. Not many houses I sell have city inspections but was surprised. Is this new or been for a while or just something city is making up?

One Answer

GFCI outlets are not required anywhere.

In places GFCI protection is required, plain outlets can be protected by a GFCI device elsewhere (GFCI breaker, GFCI deadfront, or GFCI receptacle). Doing so is the one and only legitimate purpose of the GFCI's "Load" terminals. They should be used for nothing else; the "Line" terminals get all other wires, and they take 2 wires per screw.

When a plain outlet is protected by a GFCI elsewhere, it MUST have a label saying:

GFCI protected

and a pile of them come in every GFCI box.

Obviously, nobody ever does that LOL... and then, they get written up for it. And very often, this is interpreted as "You need GFCI receptacles there". Never true.

You need stickers there. The stickers have to be not lying.

If the sticker is there, and a cheapie GFCI tester trips a GFCI somewhere, that's good enough.

I find the default blue stickers ugly, and I prefer to make my own on a Brother or P-touch labelmaker. On a white cover plate they look perfectly fine. I also consider it helpful to add a line stating where the reset is located.

Answered by Harper - Reinstate Monica on March 11, 2021

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