One Wire at a Time

I had to go somewhere last night and I got back pretty late, so I didn't get online.

A nest of wires can be intimidating if you think of all of them together, but there is an easier way. All the newer homes have things in them called "ground fault interrupters". They are basically circuit breakers, but not like the ones in your breaker box, which is the thing that replaced fuse boxes. These guys are part of a plug outlet, and they are supposed to cut the power more quickly if you do something like drop a running hair dryer into a bathtub full of water. The GRI doesn't just cut the power to that one outlet, it cuts the power to the whole circuit of which that one outlet is a part. We have one in the kitchen and another one in one of the bathrooms. Apparently both of our bathrooms are on the same circuit because, if that one GFI kicks out, both bathrooms go dead. For years we had a problem with that one. It would often kick out if the exhaust fan in either bathroom had been running and someone shut it off.

I knew a guy who was a licensed electrician and asked him about it. He said that our GFI was probably too sensitive and that it needed to be replaced. I asked him if he wanted the job, and he said that I should be able to do it myself, that it was no more difficult than changing a light switch except that there were more wires involved, I seem to remember that it was eight. I asked him if they were color coded, and he said that they probably were, but that the color coding system was not the same in every building. He tried to explain the various systems that were in common usage, but I wasn't getting it, and I didn't want to waste any more of his valuable time.

I don't know how many years it was that we put up with that breaker kicking out. It's funny how you can get used to something like that and it just seems normal after awhile. Then one day the GFI in the kitchen kicked out and it wouldn't reset. My electrician friend had retired by then, so I called another one that was recommended by our plumbing and heating people. It was pretty late in the day so I didn't expect them to send anyone out till tomorrow but, as luck would have it, they had a guy who was already in the neighborhood on another job. When he finished that job, he came to our house because it was right on his way home.

He also replaced the GFI in the bathroom while he was here, and I watched him both times. All the wires were the same color, so I was curious to see how he would figure them out. It was so simple that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself. First he took one wire off of one terminal on the old GFI, and then he connected that wire to the corresponding terminal on the new GFI. Then he took off one more wire and connected it the same way. The trick is to not have any more than one wire disconnected at one time. Easy peasy!

It occurred to me that a method like that might work in real life as well. If something seems intimidating to you, just break it down into simple steps and address one step at a time. It might not work in a case of imminent danger, like a truck bearing down on you as you stand in the middle of the road but, at times like that, you instincts will usually kick in before you could have figured out what to do anyway.