After investing in a battery powered riding lawn mower, I needed to install another GFCI in the garage to charge it.
There are 3 outlet boxes around the garage, but not one where I need one. Our beverage refrigerators have been on extension cords since we had one in the garage. I attributed the refrigerator as a source of tripping the GFCI in our master bathroom (excuse me, primary bathroom). The jury is still out on that and the mystery might never be resolved. I was going to move the refrigerator to the new GFCI without an extension cord.
There is nowhere I can plug in the lawn mower charger without moving cars out of the garage or using an extension cord. It was time to take care of this problem.
There is an outlet in the family room on the adjoining wall of the garage. I was going to tap into that outlet for the GFCI on the other side.
Efiwym, my wife, and I went on, it seems, our weekly shopping excursion to the home improvement store. While I was there, I picked up 2 “old work” PVC receptacle boxes. It is the box with the tabs so you can install it without attaching to a stud in the wall. I also bought a GFCI outlet. Now I had the things I needed to install the new outlet.
Since I took care of the things I needed done for the weekend on Saturday, I had time on Sunday to work on the outlet.
I moved the end table and lamp away from the outlet. I checked the outlet with a voltmeter, and I had power. I went downstairs, to shut off the breaker. The circuit breaker was actually marked as the “FR Room,” and after I returned upstairs, the voltmeter confirmed it.
I removed the cover and with a long regular screwdriver. I pushed the blade under the outlet box until I had the tip through the drywall of the garage wall. I now had a reference point on the location of the box from the garage. I went outside to locate the tip of the screwdriver. I was surprised how close the outlet was to the refrigerator. The six-foot cord would easily reach the outlet.
I checked the height of the outlet on the other wall. It was 48 inches high, and I used that measurement to mark the height of the new outlet. I took the new outlet box and turned it around and put it on the height mark and eyeballed the center of the stud bay. (Knowing the tip was on one side of the stud bay and the shelf bracket in the garage was screwed into the stud on the other side, I knew approximately the center of the stud bay.) I traced the outside of the box on to the wall.
With a utility knife I cut out the opening for the box. I now needed to run the wire from the family room box to the hole for the box on the garage wall. I checked before, and I had a five-foot long 14-2 Romex wire in the basement. I went back inside and removed the long blade screwdriver.
I unscrewed the receptacle and pulled it out of the box. I took a picture of both sides of the receptacle. I put a piece of black tape on the white wire that was attached to the top plug receptacle to make sure it went back in the right place, when I reinstalled it. (I would discover, it really did not make a difference. The white wire could have gone anywhere on the neutral side.) There were red wires on the bottom “hot” side and black wires on the top.
The bottom receptacle is controlled by a wall switch, hence the reason for the different color wires.
I started removing wires. Some were in the “push-in” holes, some on the side screws. Once all the wires were removed, I put the receptacle on the end table and looked at the inside of the outlet box. There was one cable of wires coming in on one side and another on the other side. I took each bundle of wires and pushed them to the side of the box.
I had another “old work” receptacle box. This box was not as deep as the one I needed for the GFCI. The problem was I should have purchased 2 deep boxes, as there were a lot of, and soon to be more, wires in this box. I decided not to remove it, but to drill a hole on the top of the box to feed the wire.
I was somewhat confident the outside wires were away from the center of the box; I drilled a hole through the top and towards the back of the box using a 7/16” blade drill bit. The light on the drill helped me see that I was in the center.
I now was ready to fish the wire to the opening in the garage. I decided to use a wire coat hanger, but I discovered that after breaking it down, it would not be long enough. I have installed a few outlet boxes in this house, but never in a wall with insulation. Usually just pushing the wire through the stud bay worked well. So, I never needed fish tape, until today. I do not own fish tape, but that would also change today.
I did my searching on the world wide web and found several inexpensive options. One option caught my eye, however. It was a fiberglass wire running kit. It contained ten 13-inch fiberglass rods with threaded brass connectors that could be screwed together to form longer lengths for running wire. Off to the store I went.
Once I got there, I started doubting my decision to buy the rod kit. Would the rods be too stiff to be bent to fit into the outlet box? I first grabbed the fish tape; put it back and found the fiberglass rod kit and bought it.
When I got home, I immediately started running the rods from the box through the hole. Screwing one section on at a time, I stopped after three and went to the garage. I could see the rod in the opening. I tried to push down the rod so I could pull it through the hole. The rod was too long. Back into the family room and pulled it out and removed one section. Back in the garage. It was still too long. I went back into the family room and removed another. That did the trick and I grabbed the rod and pulled it through the hole.
The kit came with an end piece to attach the wire. I hooked the wire and taped it up. I tried to pull the wire through the garage hole, and I could not. The wire was hanging up at the connection. After multiple tries, reconnecting and re-taping, I finally was able to guide it through the outlet and pulled it through the garage wall hole.
I pulled the wire through the outlet box, pushed the box into the hole. I turned the screws for the inner tabs until the box was tight against the drywall. After a quick look at the GFCI installation instructions, I hooked up the wires and screwed the GFCI into place. I was so confident, I put the outlet cover on, cleaned up the garage area and moved to the family room.
I needed to add an extra hot wire and a neutral wire, so both outlets could have power. I included the wires in the respective wire nuts and attached the wires to the outlet. I reattached the bottom red wires and the other white ground wire. There was a lot of wires in that box, and I carefully pushed them back into the box and screwed in the outlet. I went downstairs and reset the circuit breaker. Upstairs I put the voltmeter on both outlets. 120 volts, of course. I plugged the family room light into the outlet. Success. I plugged the lawn mower charger to the garage outlet. Also, success.
A two hour project took about four hours, but it was done. Finally, after decades, we had our beverage refrigerator off an extension cord and an outlet for the lawn mower. I stepped back from the GFCI outlet in the garage. Oh yes, I was so proud. I grabbed a soda out of the refrigerator and went back into the house to have my Zen moment.
