I am connecting a GFCI outlet in my kitchen. The old outlet had two hot wires, two neutral wires, and two wires feeding the dishwasher jumped in with the top pair of hot and neutral wires. I'm concerned about the two bottom wires having power, I don't know why they do?
Wiring – Why do the two bottom wires on the GFCI have power
wiring
Related Topic
- Electrical – Dishwasher Power Cord has Two White Wires. Isn’t the wide one neutral
- Electrical – How to wire a GFCI with 4 white and 4 black wires – see pictures
- Electrical – Correctly wiring GFCI with two hot lines
- Wiring – need to turn off two breakers to cut power to an outlet
- Electrical – How to replace electrical outlets that have two wires under same screw
- Wiring – Installing a GFCI Outlet with two neutral wires
- Wiring – Multiple GFCI with two hot wires and shared neutral
Best Answer
Your top wires are probably your LINE wires. Basically the wires that come from your panel. Your bottom wires sound like your LOAD wires. The way a GFCI works is you give the plug LINE power to protect that plug. But if you want to protect more plugs than just that one plug, you put the other wires on the LOAD of the plug. Basically anything down stream is protected if it is fed from the load side of the plug. So a regular looking non GFCI receptacle could stop working one day, because it tripped the GFCI that feeds it. So you would reset the GFCI and the plugs would work again, Your dishwasher, since it does not want to be GFCI protected (would probably trip the GFCI) is attached to the line wires. So it is not GFCI protected. It gets power from before it even goes onto the plug. When installing your plug, look at the back of it. The top two terminals are usually labelled LINE and the bottom is labelled LOAD. Don't forget the silver screw is your white wire and the copper screw is your black wire. Green is ground.