How'd it go today?

Heh. Whatever is there was working fine until Friday. And as I said it blew right when I pkugged in my Christmas lights. Same as I'd already done a number of times this year. And being out of town I'm probably a $100 just by the time a electrician puts his vehicle in park. Let alone starting to figure things out.

But if I have to pay. I'll have to pay. I frigging hate working on household electrical.
 
My course of action seems solid though? Determine if both breakers are involved or if the second one just blew because it was next to the other one? And see what's actually hot from the box or not? As for the white wires? I have no idea why they are crimped together like that and only attached to the outlet in one spot? I actually have no idea what the white wires actually do anyways. Lol.
 
I'm an electricians son - I got my first shock at 14 doing exactly what I was told not to do!

When was the wiring last reworked Squish? It does have a finite lifespan
 
I'm guessing the insulation wore or cracked off a wire somewhere and is grounding out. Possibly somewhere other than the plug itself.
 
Is the gfci a 110V?

If it is, disconnect the red, and tape it up.

You only need one leg of the 220V to make the 110v. Black and white.
 
Looks like those connections are uninsulated crimps, and they have wire sticking out of them, which isn't kosher on anything ever. Get some wire nuts and try it again, if those crimp deals touch anything including each other in the box they will just blow the circuit because it would be a direct short.

Would the red wire be a continuation of the circuit? Do you have conduit or romax? The red might have been for a switch or other outlet or something. They wouldn't have run 220 to an exterior outlet would they?
 
My guess, and I think Al will chime in here with more knowledge than me, is you have two legs feeding the old plug. I think they have a connector you can remove that jumps juice to the other plug. That way you can have constant current on one plug and switch the other. They probably thought they could up the capacity by doing the red on a different breaker. GFCI probably don't have that removalble jumper so what you have is a dead short wired the way you have it. And like has been said, I bet taping up the red will make it work. Al????
 
I feel like bragging. sorry, I know 99% of the time us tree guys earn a hard living, but sometimes, just sometimes, it all comes together and we make good money
$6K job, $4300.00 profit after ALL expenses.
Started at 8AM sharp, driving out of the job totally finished AND PAID at 12:30
Yup, a good day!

All us tree service owners need days like this :) 20171204_105540(0)-1.jpg 20171204_122109.jpg 20171204_092641.jpg 20171204_104734.jpg 20171204_104734.jpg
 
I Downloaded here and turned one around. Then did a "preview".... It didn't help.
 

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Here is some of what is going on with these sideways photos:

For example, on Windows 7, Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Explorer ignore the Exif Orientation tag. Windows 8 added support for the Exif Orientation tag, which continued into Windows 10. Images may appear correct on a Windows 10 or 8 PC, but rotated differently on a Windows 7 PC.


from this site: https://www.howtogeek.com/254830/why-your-photos-dont-always-appear-correctly-rotated/

Does not seem to be a simple solution so far.
 
Win10 here and they are still screwed up. It appears that the forum software will only display pictures in a landscape orientation. Any pictures taken in portrait orientation will be turned sideways.
 
My guess, and I think Al will chime in here with more knowledge than me, is you have two legs feeding the old plug. I think they have a connector you can remove that jumps juice to the other plug. That way you can have constant current on one plug and switch the other. They probably thought they could up the capacity by doing the red on a different breaker. GFCI probably don't have that removalble jumper so what you have is a dead short wired the way you have it. And like has been said, I bet taping up the red will make it work. Al????

I think this is what's happening. To be clear those crimps were effectively black taped in the box, I ripped the tape off for the pic. I also happen to have the same 3m black tape that linesmen use for wrapping, well whatever it is they wrap. Heavy duty sticky stuff anyways and will re-wrap them. I do have some marretes around though and could put one on the red wire and then tape it.

I'm going to try this tomorrow am in the light I'll have a bit of time. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Thanks everyone who's chimed in with advice. I really appreciate it.

Pete. The wire I would suspect is mostly original, but I wouldn't know for sure. This plug looked original but shortly before I bought (8years ago) the whole place was renoed so I'd assume some of it has and some of it hasn't been replaced. I'm hopeful the above is what I'm dealing with. Makes sense to me with that red wire.
 
When I wire an outside plug that might get used to plug in a pickup or two, I run two wires and cut the jumper two breakers.

Plugging in two block heaters into one circuit is too much for 12-2 wire.

Dont know why, but I have never had any luck with GFCI outdoors.

Good luck.
 
Maybe I was just getting lucky... let's see...
 

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