Submitted by Norcine t3_1280med in DIY

I've been re-doing some of the outlets in my house, and have done pretty much all of the outlets that exist on a specific circuit. For the last one, I wanted to install an AFCI outlet. This seems pretty straightforward, and I found the outlet that branches power to the rest of the circuit. I located the neutral/hot wires that come from the box, and there are 2 other branches that feed the circuit to either side of the room. I tagged the wires from the box, and pigtailed the others together, connecting them to the appropriate terminals on the AFCI outlet - I double, triple, and quadruple checked that these were the correct terminals. "Test" didn't seem to pop the internal breaker, and when I flip the power, the rest of the outlets in the circuit now reads hot/ground reverse.

Obviously I didn't keep the circuit powered.

I'll have an electrician come out and look if it makes sense to do so, but I was hoping this would be a pretty easy troubleshoot. I can take pictures later, but need to run out for a bit.

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Comments

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awgunner t1_jegyzki wrote

A few things on the AFI / GFI outlets. The line side goes to the breaker. The load side goes to any continuing outlets. The silver screw goes to your neutral/white wire, while the brass screw goes to the Hot/black wire.

If the test switch doesn't work, then something is either miswired or the outlet is bad.

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MajorElevator4407 t1_jegz9b5 wrote

If the test button didn't turn off the outlets I'm guessing you have the line and load backwards.

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Knofbath t1_jeh37hp wrote

Could be other outlets are wired incorrectly, which is throwing off this outlet. Got one of those simple polarity/ground testers, ran around checking all my outlets and found an entire room where the polarity was swapped because of one outlet.

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Drone30389 t1_jeh4533 wrote

If the test button doesn't trigger the AFCI then either you have have LINE and LOAD reversed, or the AFCI may be defective.

First thing to try is: disconnect the pigtail for the two efferent cables and then retest the AFCI with the TEST button and with your outlet tester.

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