Electrical problem. I built my house in 1988 using 12ga wire through out. I’ve had no problem until about 8 months ago. I put down new flooring in the up stairs bath room and changed the outlet pluges to the color white. These plugs are down line from a GFCI outlet located downstairs in a half bath.
A short time later the upstairs plugs stopped working. I checked the GFCI outlet and reset it. No luck. The upstairs were still out. As a test I replaced the GFCI plug with a regular plug and the upstairs plugs worked. I then replaced the GFCI plug with a new one and the upstairs plugs worked.
That was fine until last week. A friend was visiting us and while using the upstairs bath the plugs went out. She was using a hairdrier in one of the outlets. I checked all the breaker and GFCI switches and reset them. No luck.
Again I thought it may be the GFCI plug. I ran a heavy duty extension cord from the hall so she could finish and get on her way. The extension cord is one that has a light in the female end so you can tell if the outlet is live. After the departure of our guest I took the extension cord and plugged it into the outlet she had been using and dropped it on the floor in order to get it out of the hall.
I was planing to do some more checks and get an electrician. However tropical storm Arlene came on the scene and I got involved preparing for it. (I live in Pensacola) During the storm the electricty “blinked” a couple of times about 10 or 15 minutes apart. After the storm, I went upstairs and glanced in the bathroom as I passed. Guess what? The light on the extension cord was lighted. I checked the outlets and all were working fine. Anyone have any ideas/suggestions?
Replies
You drove a screw through the insulation of a wire under your new bathroom floor?...the line which feeds your GFCI and all your new plugs?
I hate it when that happens.
Sorry. No screws. New floor was tile & mastic.
Do you know if all the outlets that stop working are on the same side of the circuit breaker panel? I chased a similar problem for months one time - certain outlets and lights in the house would mysteriously quit working and then come back on. I'd go downstairs and flip the circuit breakers on and off, and it sometimes seemed to help, sometimes not. It turned out there was a poor connection at one of the hot wires out at the power pole. The power company came out and fixed the connection, and I haven't had any problems since.
I chased down an identical situation in my father in law's house about a month ago. He was doing the same thing... power would go off to 1/2 the house, then he's throw the main - or start the electric sryer - to get it going again. Power company came out & fixed it at the pole.
Probably a bad connection somewhere. Where is the question, though. I'd first suspect a wire-nutted connection somewhere, since it's fairly easy to screw one of those up.
Have you checked the wire connections on the new receptacles? maybe one's loose.
If you used the backstab push in connections, move the wires to the screws.
Mike
It's O.k. to think out of the box, Just don't walk off of the plank!
Edited 6/12/2005 8:26 pm ET by Mike S
Lee,
Do you have one of those plug-in testers? They have the three indicator lights on them.
Although those testers can read false under certain circumstances, use it to at least narrow the troubleshooting.
First , check ALL connections at the panel, then using the tester.
check the GFI while the circuit is good
check to see if there is a "hot " the next time it happens
Do you know if the circuit feeds through other devices before it lands at the GFI? check those connections
I agree with DanH,....... i.e. you have a loose connection, probably a neutral, since none of the breakers tripped.
Twist all connections before using wire nuts in the future
maddog
Edited 6/12/2005 8:40 pm ET by maddog
Well, dang...pretty cool puzzle.
I always hone in on the obvious 'justa coincidence' answer. But this time maybe not. You say all the outlets are downstream from the GFCI..therefore on the same circuit..Are they connected to the line side of the GFCI or the load end? (In otherwords, does the GFCI protect all of those outlets, or are they in parallel w/ the line--feed--of the GFCI?)
Does sound like you've got a loose connection somewhere (either a neutral OR a hot), but why does it happen only when someone is applying a load to the circuit downstream from your GFCI? And it's intermittant. Again, sounds like a loose connection. But then you changed out the GFCI and everything worked fine. For a while. Strange clue. Points to the problem being in the GFCI box. But then you never touched that outlet when you replaced all the others, right? So another coincidence? COuld be that your replacing that GFCI had nothing to do with the power being restored?
Next time it happens, check everyting w/ a multimeter..Pull out all outlets and let them hang..check the hots and neutral/ground for voltage. Something is loose and a load (or a voltage surge from a storm) is heating it up just enough to cause a temporary disconnect. I think the GFCI at the head of the stream is just a red herring in this case.
Sidenote: The fellow who lost one hot leg of his service due to a loose connection at the pole got off easy. I lost my neutral at the pole a while back and encountered 240 volts on half of my circuits..burned up every electronic appliance I had plugged in--(turned on or not!)
Thanks. Due to all the suggestions from the respondees (and my schematic from the electrican who wired the house) I found the source this morning. It was the first outlet down line from the GFCI. It was an outdoor plug (with appropriate cover) that was rusted and corroaded so bad I had to dig it out of the box. The feed wire from it to the upstairs bath outlets was connected but apparently when it became hot from use it expanded enough to break the connection periodically. My wife uses the plug to run her bird bath fountain and it is also near a hose bib she uses to water her ferns, flowers, etc. Great when we can blame it on the wife, right? Don't think it was her fault though as the Gulf Coast really gets a lot of moisture & hiumidity.
Cool.. Thanks for posting the feedback. This sort of information is invaluable in helping us to untangle future conundrums! Indeed, your replacing the GFCI was just coincidental and had nothing to do with the problem...but the fact that your replacing the outlets downstream also was not relevant to the cause was something I did not expect!
Ah, but the downstream outlets -were- relevant.Not all the downstream outlets were replaced.This one was obviously skipped in the replacement.Finally replace this... the first in the line, downstream... and the problem is solved.Your thinking was correct. The application of that thinking had not been fully applied.
Are we there yet ?