@John Mackenzie if you have a means of testing the circuit you can test from each conductor to the metal box and see if one of them has voltage. If it is an old metal clad cable called BX the shielding may be grounded. They do not intend for the shield to provide a ground for the receptacle though. On a GFCI receptacle polarity does matter. The energized conductor needs to go to the hot side which will have a gold screw. The GFI also has terminals marked line and load. To feed receptacle you use the ones marked line. The outlet will work properly with just a hot and a neutral attached. It does not have to have a ground. There is a code ruling which says you can replace an old two prong outlet with a GFI outlet without having to provide a ground to it because the GFI is a safety feature

Hm.. I thought it had to be grounded or it would trip

Ok then I'm at a loss for what's wrong, I put the old one back in and it works fine

I put the power to the gold screws and neutral to silver screws

And I swapped them when I thought I mixed up line and load, but it didn't work either way

The hot wire goes on the gold screw the white wire goes on the silver screw. The silver screw is for the neutral. Both of these two wires will go on the upper portion of the outlet marked line. How many wires total are you working with two or four

Four

One pair of wires meaning a black and white are the feed circuit coming in. These will have to go to the terminals marked line. The other two wires can go in the load terminals. If you had the hot wire landed properly but had the wrong neutral paired with it the light may work but the outlet will not function properly. You will have to get the hot and neutral paired correctly

Hopefully you can just look at the box ifthe cables come in in separate connectors it's easy to see which two are a pair

They don't, they all come in separately lol, I tried to look back behind the box but I can't see

Can you take a picture of the box and send it to me

It's at my mom's house, I'll stop by after work tomorrow and take a pic

And if you can try to take some type of a tester with you even if it is just a small hand-held light. test light. What it is is you had a hot and neutral come into the Box and feed the outlet and then a pair of wires going out to another load Downstream. You have to identify that pair that it's coming in live. With a test light you should be able to test cross the wires until you find the two that read hot. That should be your hot and your neutral that you would put on the line side.

But if you have some small tester like that I could talk you through it easy enough

Isn't that weird though that it works fine with the old outlet, and after installing the new one in one configuration I swapped the positions of the black wires w/each other and the positions of the white wires w/each other, and it didn't work in either configuration? Then I reinstalled the old outlet and it works fine? Even if I mixed up line and load, I swapped it and still got nothing.

Eh I'll grab a test light and report back tomorrow

Yes I can get confusing when they're not marked properly. You just have to get the hot black wire with the correct white wire. On A regular outlet it does not have the line and load options that the GFI does. In that scenario you just have to get the blacks on one side and the whites on the other

Huh huh huh

Good one Greg

Watching other guys work all day sure is exhausting

Grab a shovel bro, plenty of work to do! 😆 😆

It's cold today, I didn't dress properly.

Fam, I'm a big bad heavy machinery operator. I'm too good to associate with those dirty plebians.

Haha

@John O - you're going to get fat haha.

I need it, man, I'm skinny as hell

You're right though, every professional operator I've seen was 300+lbs

😂 I need it too, I've worked my ass off, literally. I was so stoked on Sunday, I just broke 150lbs😆

Sheeeiiiit

You work outside? I thought you did custom stairwells and shit

I do historic preservation in general, I work inside and out. Even doing windows I'm in and out, painters caulk and paint windows shut, almost like they don't know windows are suppose to open.

Usually with windows I spend the first 4 hours of the day outside.

Hey if I have a question ... who do I @?

@John O -#7072

@John O -

@Deleted User did you get your problem taken care of

Greg's a master electrician, I'm just a late stages apprentice @Deleted User

Yeah a laid-off electrician LOL

Ooh, that sucks dude

You ever get paid by that guy?

Hell. No! Pissed off bad too