Outlets & Switches

No — GFCI protection is required specifically in areas with water exposure risk: kitchens, bathrooms, garages, unfinished basements, and exterior outlets. Other living spaces typically need AFCI protection instead, which addresses a different hazard.

GFCI protects against ground faults, which cause electric shock. AFCI protects against arc faults, which cause electrical fires. They're both important but detect different hazards, and modern code requires each in different areas of the home.

Only if the outlet is actually connected to a proper ground, or the replacement is a GFCI outlet correctly labeled 'No Equipment Ground' where grounding isn't present. Simply swapping the outlet without addressing grounding creates a false sense of protection.

A few things can cause this: a tripped GFCI elsewhere on the same protected run (a common source of confusion — one GFCI outlet can protect several 'downstream' outlets in other rooms), a loose connection at the outlet itself, or a 'half-hot' outlet where only part of the receptacle is switched. If resetting any nearby GFCI outlets doesn't restore power, the outlet itself likely needs to be inspected.

There's no single fixed number — it depends on the circuit's amperage and what's actually plugged in, since the total load matters more than the outlet count. A circuit with several high-draw devices can be overloaded with fewer outlets than a lightly-used circuit with more. We can evaluate your specific circuits if you're planning to add outlets or are seeing frequent trips.