Ground wire question

I didn't find an answer to this one in my electrical book.

I am replacing some old outlet receptacles with new ones. The wire coming into the boxes is your average NM 12/2 but inside the box the wires are very short making it a tight area to work in. I can get the black and white wires out enough to reach the new receptacle or make pigtails to the new receptacle but the ground wire is just too short.

So, I want to attach a new ground wire (6 inches or so in length) that runs from the new receptacle and pigtails with the ground wire inside the box.

Does this new 6" wire have to be the same gage? In other words, will it matter if the new wire is thicker than the ground wire it is being pigtailed to?

 

Thicker would be just fine electrically, but will be harder to work with in terms of stuffing everything back in the box. (as a matter of code, the wires need to be long enough that 6" of wire can extend outside of the box.) Just don't go thinner.

 

are you using new 3 wire outlets? if so, they need to be GFCI! and, use GFCI in baths, kit, gar, bsmt, outdoors.
Do you mean the grounded white neutral wire?

 

GFCI are only required in a few places (including bathrooms, kitchen counters, outdoors, garages, unfinished basements). There is no requirement for general-purpose receptacles in a single family dwelling to be GFCI if a grounding conductor is present. You can use a GFCI to replace a 2-wire receptacle if a ground is not present.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm not going to bother with GFCI's for this particular project since it's a finished basement.

 

I suggest that you "pre-wire" the receptacles with "connection-leads" 6"to 8" in lenth, using stranded THHN copper wire, and simply Wire-nut the leads to the Branch-Circuit conductors inside the O-B.

One definite advantage in that the Branch-Circuit wiring which extends from box-to-box is now a "Closed" circuit and the possibility of an "Open" circuit ocurring because of a defective receptacle connection is eliminated.

Good Luck & Enjoy the Experience!!!!!!!!!!!1