I have a wiring question for a GFCI receptacle.

I’ve wired many before but need some input on how to do this correctly for this situation, which is an ungrounded outlet in an older home.

Here’s the situation:

I go to change out a receptacle in my hallway, all the receptacles in our house, built 1954, are ungrounded but I’ve slowly been replacing them. Luckily the majority of the receptacle boxes are grounded, they just didn’t ground the receptacle. For those I’m able to pigtail a ground wire in and it’s good.

Some of these are NOT grounded though and I just hit one. It must be in the middle of a circuit because it’s got two Romex cables in the box but no ground wire in it. The boxes are metal and tiny/narrow which caused me to dig it out of the wall in order to replace it with a modern larger box that will fit a GFCI receptacle which is the accepted way to replace an old 2-prong receptacle. I know it’s not as good as having a real, grounded 3 wire setup, but running new circuits is just not in the cards right now.

My question: since this outlet feeds something else, do I still wire the hot Romex wires to the LINE terminals and the Romex that feeds the next outlet to the LOAD terminals as usual?

I understand that this will NOT make the next outlet in line GFCI protected and if that one also has a box that isn’t grounded (which should be the case here) then I have to put a GFCI there as well and so on till the end of that circuit, correct?

Again, I’m not cutting my walls open at this time to run new circuits, it’s some sort of very early, very hard, almost cement board like drywall with a plaster finish coat.

Thanks for all the input and advice!

Any outlets not covered by GFI (line side) needs to be two prong, any load side can be three pronged, just has to be labeled "no ground preset, GFI protected.

A ground is not needed for a GFCI to work, it sounds unintuitive, but is true.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Any outlets not covered by GFI (line side) needs to be two prong, any load side can be three pronged, just has to be labeled "no ground preset, GFI protected.

A ground is not needed for a GFCI to work, it sounds unintuitive, but is true.

That’s not what I’m reading.

It was specifically stated that if the GFCI feeding a downstream outlet does not have a ground, those downstream outlets are not considered to be GFCI protected.

Try googling how a GFI works. It monitors power going in (hot) and power going out (neutral). It does this through a Current Transformer (CT). There is no where in the equation that a ground is involved. Just because the word "Ground" is used in GFCI does not mean a ground is needes. To work.

If it makes you sleep better at night for some reason to install GFIs at all locations, just make sure you hook them up all "line". You still need to use the "no ground present"" sticker on each outlet.