I have very early Romex wiring in my house (1951) and it’s either got no ground wire or a 16 gauge ground wire and the majority of receptacles around the house are 2 prong.

I’ve begun replacing each two prong receptacle with a GFCI receptacle at each wall box. This guy on Reddit is arguing with me that all I need to do is put in a GFCI breaker on that circuit and put in a regular old three prong receptacle on each box.

I don’t believe this is what the code dictates? I was under the impression that each receptacle needs to be replaced with a dedicated GFCI in order to be replaced with a three prong at that location.

Who is correct here?

I'm not an electrician, but I understand it the same way you do.

Putting a gfci (marked "no ground") on each outlet of a 2 wire circuit is allowed and safer than using a 2 prong outlet.

A gfci breaker will not work, nor will adding a single gfci for the entire circuit.

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A gfci breaker will not work, nor will adding a single gfci for the entire circuit

Really? Why do you say that?

Also not an electrician, though I'd think either solution would work, going with GFCI breakers would likely still mean you'd need to replace some of your outlets to accept newer three prong plugs, and that leaves an ungrounded issue at each receptacle. Personally, I'd opt for the GFCI receptacle approach in each box given it moves the protection closer to any potential short and means I don't have to work in my main box.

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Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

A gfci breaker will not work, nor will adding a single gfci for the entire circuit

Really? Why do you say that?

The way I’m reading it according to code is that you cannot replace a two prong receptacle with a three prong receptacle unless that receptacle is a dedicated GFCI receptacle?

Well I’m no an electrician either but my rudimentary understand of electricity is a GFCI breaker or outlet protects everything down line from it and the will work on a hot/neutral circuit as they compare current on those wires to be within a certain value of each other.

I would think you could put a GFCI breaker in the panel and the simply use regular outlets in the boxes and get the same level of protection.

As for marking “no ground” I’m guessing that is a code requirement