Lost Power on One Wall- Help!!

[havighurst]

I lost power on one wall. I checked the circuit breaker box and none are tripped. I still reset all of them anyway- still out. There are no GFI outlets in the area to reset. Any ideas what might be causing this or how to fix it?

Thanks.

Mark

[Rand]

It sounds like you have a lose/broken connection somewhere. Outlets are typically wired in a daisy chain fashion. The wire leaves the breaker box, goes to the first outlet, then the next, then the next etc.

My guess is that the outlet that feeds the outlets on the dead wall is either broken or there is a lose wire in it.

I would start at the first dead outlet and look to nearest live one. Turn the breaker off for it and pull the cover and outlet out and see if you can figure out what's wrong. If all appears okay (a continuity tester would be really helpful here) put it back together and repeat the process on the last dead outlet.

Good luck,
Rand

[gerti]

Make sure to check all GFCIs in the house. Some time ago I bought a GFCI to retrofit an outside outlet that did not seem to have one. Before installing I plugged in my tester, mainly to help find the breaker. Out of a spur I hit the GFCI test button on my tester, and the outlet went dead... Amazed I went to check everything, and found it was connected to a GFCI 30 feet and 3 rooms and a hall away!

[Hellrazor]

1. Double check every GFCI anyway. Sometime a GFCI outlet will fail and still seem to reset. If you have a garage, check if there is a GFCI outlet in it. A lot of people forget about the garage and can't find the problem.

2. Try to find out which breaker controls that area and trace the wires. A loose connection in a junction box could be the issue.

3. The actual breaker could have died, this does happen time to time. Only way to find this out is to have a meter and be comfortable taking the cover off the panel.

4. Did you do any work in the house lately? Hanging something, etc? You could have hit a wire.

[eccentrictinkerer]

At a friends' house I found that the garage door opener was on the same circuit as the downstairs bathroom. Both were fed by the upstairs bathroom GFCI!

[havighurst]

There was no work on the house recently. In fact, I don't think anything was even plugged or unplugged from the wall. I will check all the GFCIs in the house and see if that helps.

[ironhat]

If you test a GFI and don't get a solid 'click' it's dead. Also, when you pull the outlets look for bayonet type connections. The wire pushes into a hole in the back and there are no wires around the screws. I've had a couple of those come loose. I know this isn't much but they are what I have experienced. Best of luck.

[JimD]

GFIs are for bathrooms, basements, garages or kitchens. If the dead outlets are in these areas, then a GFI is likely the issue. They are much less reliable than normal outlets. If the outlets are in other areas (living room, family room, bedrooms) then it is probably a loose connection or a problem with an outlet.

Outlets have two screws on the hot and neutral side to facilitate making connections daisy chain and to allow two feeds to the same outlet. There is a metal piece connecting the two screws on each side that can be broken. I have "half-hots", for instance, on either side of the MBR bed. Top outlets are always hot and bottoms are switched by the wall switch. For this situation, the two screws are not connected on the outlet, each is fed by a different circuit. The metal piece on the outlet has to be broken for these outlets.

When you start pulling outlet covers, you may want to know the above. You could find connections either only on the outlet or on the outlet plus wire nuts depending on what is going on. For a circuit to be good and then go bad, you lost continuity somewhere. If the metal bar connecting the two screws is not intact for some reason, that would also affect continuity (assuming it is not a half hot outlet).

Before I messed a bunch with the outlets, I would also try switching breakers. It could be that the breaker has gone bad and that is where the issue is. This requires removing the panel cover which is a time for extreme caution. Once the panel if off, throw the main breaker so you are not working on live bus bars and pop a couple breakers off - one on a "good" circuit and one on the "bad" circuit. Move the wires and reconnect them to the bus bar. Trip the main and if your "bad" circuit moved with the breaker, you know you have to replace that breaker.

When I have had this problem, it has been a GFI outlet. I've done the other things but it was not my problem. If your electrician connected with the push holes on the back of a typical outlet instead of using the screws on the side, that would make a loose connection a lot more likely.

Jim

[havighurst]

I checked all the GFI outlets and all are good. I will try replacing the outlets this weekend. If that doesn't work, I guess it is in the circuit box. That is a little out of my expertise.

[Hellrazor]

I would check the hot lead coming out of the breaker before going any further. Only do this if you are comfortable working in a hot panel or if it is a newer panel with a main disconnect.


I test stuff up to 3 phase at work, so this seems routine to me. But I know a lot of people don't like working around anything hot.

[wbsettle]

havinghurst, how did you check the GFI's?

Went through almost exactly what you're describing a few months ago...thread's around here somewhere. Lost one outlet in a powder room plus all outlets in downstairs master bath and full bath upstairs. Replaced every "dead" outlet due to push type connection mentioned earlier...no joy. Problem ended up being a GFI in the garage...nearly 50' from the first "dead" outlet in the powder room. I had "checked" that GFI when the problem first appeared, but stuff plugged directly into it had power so figured the dead outlets must be on some other GFI (the one in the powder room seemed like a good candidate). Turns out the garage GFI was staying hot and testing OK according to my outlet tester while tripped, but at least it was protecting everything downstream.

Still don't know why the two outlets less than 5' apart in the powder room are on different circuits...

Good luck.

-Brent

[just started]

You can not have 2 GFI's on the same circuit!

[wbsettle]

You can not have 2 GFI's on the same circuit!

I think this is aimed at my "two outlet powder room".

While I didn't realize you couldn't have two GFI's on the same circuit, that still doesn't explain my powder room wiring. The non-GFI outlet is protected by the GFI in the garage (which also protects other bathrooms even further downstream). It makes no sense for the other powder room outlet to be on a different circuit, GFI or not. The only thing I've identified as being on that circuit are various overhead light fixtures...which physcially would appear to be upstream of the GFI since they're all closer to the panel than the outlet, but obviously reality could be different inside the walls.

Apologies to OP, back to your issue...

-Brent

[eccentrictinkerer]

You can not have 2 GFI's on the same circuit!

It's true that you can't have a GFI feeding another GFI, but you can have multiple GFI's on the same line.

This is often done in old homes wired without ground wires. This technique protects each outlet. IMHO, this makes the outlet safer than if were conventionally grounded.