The little red light on the back outlet was on again at 6 a.m., which meant it had rained overnight. I didn't need a weather app. For about three weeks in late May and June, that outlet tripped every time it rained and reset fine once it dried out. I kept pushing the reset button and moving on with my day, which, looking back, was the actual mistake.
It's the outdoor GFCI outlet next to our back stoop, which we generously call the patio. Tessa runs a string of lights over the stoop from it all summer, and I use it for the occasional extension cord. When it's tripped, the string lights don't come on, which is how Tessa started keeping track of the problem before I did.
What I tested
First, the basics. Breaker off at the panel, then the Klein non-contact tester to confirm the outlet was dead before I touched anything. I use that tester every single time, even when I'm sure, because I've been sure before.
Then I took the cover off. It was the old flip-style weatherproof cover, the kind that only seals when nothing is plugged in. Two problems jumped out. The hinge had a crack running most of the way across it, and since the string lights were plugged in all summer, the flip lid had been propped open the whole time anyway. Rain running down the aluminum siding was finding its way straight into the box.
Behind the cover, the GFCI had rust-colored streaks on its face screws and a faint white crust near the terminals. The bottom of the box had damp grit and one dead spider. So the outlet wasn't failing at random. It was getting wet, and a GFCI is designed to cut the power when current starts going somewhere it shouldn't. In a way it had been working perfectly for three weeks. I'd just been ignoring what it was telling me.
The fix, for $40
Two parts: a weather-resistant GFCI, marked "WR" on its face, for $22, and an in-use cover, the deep bubble kind that closes over the plug even with a cord in it, for $18. The first store had the WR outlet but only a shallow in-use cover that wouldn't close over the string lights' bulky plug, so I made a second trip.
The swap itself was routine. Breaker off, test, note which wires were on the "line" terminals and whether anything was on "load." Ours had only one set of wires, so nothing downstream depends on it. I connected the new outlet, folded the wires back neatly, mounted it and installed the new cover with its gasket sitting flat against the mounting block on the siding. Then breaker on. My plug-in outlet tester showed correct wiring, and its test button tripped the GFCI the way it should.
The real test came last Thursday, when a thunderstorm rolled through around dinner and dumped rain for an hour. The next morning, no red light, and the string lights came on at dusk like nothing had happened. Three more rains since then. Still no red light.
The upstairs side note
While I was in an electrical mood, I took the plug-in tester through the upstairs bedroom. I already knew some of the upstairs outlets are two-wire and ungrounded, a leftover from before the walls were drywalled over in the 1980s. The tester confirmed a handful of them reading "open ground." Nothing there is broken, exactly, but nothing expensive gets plugged into them either.
Fixing that properly is a job for a licensed electrician, whether that means new grounded circuits or some other approach they'd recommend. It's on the someday list, right under "panel upgrade," which an electrician quoted at $3,200 back in May when we were looking at heat pumps. Anything that starts at the panel isn't mine to touch. One outdoor outlet with a breaker I can switch off and a tester I trust is about the edge of what I'm comfortable doing, and I'm fine staying right there.
Trip count: 2, both because of a cover.
