Dates for GFCI requirements

Electrical codes have changed substantially over the last couple of decades.  New products and new technologies have come onto the market, sometimes on their own and sometimes at the insistence of the code-making authorities.  But there’s no doubt that the electrical codes have changed much more than the plumbing codes, for example.

And one important area of change is in the places where ground-fault circuit-interrupter (GFCI) protection is required.  It’s rare that I inspect an older house and don’t mention at least one place where GFCI protection is missing.  Many times GFCI protection clearly wasn’t required in these locations when the house was built, but other times it’s not so clear if GFCI protection was required and somebody just missed it.

To help answer that question here’s a list of places where GFCI protection is required, and the first year that it was required by the National Electrical Code (NEC).  Keep in mind that some places don’t enforce the NEC.  Most places wait several code cycles before adopting the newest version of the NEC, so it’s very hard to know when a particular city started to enforce any particular version of the NEC.  Local jurisdictions can modify the NEC as they adopt it, so a city might purposely choose not to enforce certain GFCI requirements.  So it can be quite hard to know for sure if a lack of GFCI protection was a mistake or allowed by code at the time of construction.

But here’s the list, and this can act as a rough guideline to know when GFCI protection became required.  But keep in mind that upgrading to GFCI protection is almost always quite easy and rather inexpensive.  I urge you to upgrade to GFCI protection as much as possible.

This should not be considered an exhaustive list of the locations where GFCI protection is required.