I’ll start by saying My house is from the 1800’s and the electrical has been modified numerous times over the years. It does not have knob and tube wiring. Yesterday my window air conditioner was running for at least 12+ hours and it tripped the breaker. My wife flipped the breaker back on without turning off the A/C first (or giving it time to cool down) and now 2 lights and an outlet that are on that circuit do not work. Other outlets on that same circuit still do work. I am concerned that this may have created a dangerous situation. I no longer use that circuit for the air conditioner (it is now on a dedicated circuit by itself). As for the lights that don’t work (2 switches in same box), when I opened the cover plate to the box I saw 2 wires each containing 3 wires (I am not very familiar with 3 wire configurations). I tried to trace the wires for this entire circuit but was unable to find where the switch that doesn’t work connects to this circuit. I plan on getting an electrician in to fix this ASAP but wanted to see if it is safe to continue to use the rest of the circuit in the meantime?
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Old houses can have some weird electrical work in them, and it's not possible from here to diagnose exactly what's happened at your place. There are some dangers against which circuit breakers cannot protect you. A partially-chewed wire, for example, can overheat and cause a fire before it draws enough to trip the breaker.
If several things on a circuit suddenly stop working following a prolonged heavy load, that indicates a something has let go. Until you find out what it is, your safest bet is to turn off that breaker. Wait till your electrician gets there to check things out.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not brought
low by this? For thine evil pales before that which
foolish men call Justice....
I don't think it is possible to know if is safe or not. What I think happened is that the circuit went intermittent, which cycled the AC, causing the breaker to trip. Nothing your wife did caused the current problem. You may want to look at other outlets and boxes on the circuit to find a poor connection.
when this happens it's almost always a loose neutral in the panel, it'll be easy to spot 'cause the wire and insulation will probably be charred ..
"when this happens it's almost always a loose neutral in the panel, it'll be easy to spot 'cause the wire and insulation will probably be charred .."Actually when that happens it is almost never a problem at the panel, neutral, breaker, or hot.Some of the circuit still works. That requires a neutral back to the panel. However, in that old of a building and one that has probably been updated over the years it is possible that part of a circuit is miswired and is connected to a neutral from a different circuit.But most like the problem is at a junction where the circuit goes from one box to the next. Either hot or neutral..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Agreed that it is definitely not at the panel. Since some receptacles work, and some don't, they were probably "daisy-chained" and the downstream ones are now disconnected --- either the hot or the neutral. My experience is that this comes from receptacles connected in the era when "back-wiring" was popular --- before we found out how fragile those connections actually were in cheap outlets. One of those heated up enough to cause an open.
Rick
If you are not adept electrically an electrician is cheap!
There are so many ways for this circuit to be messed up that we can't even list them all,someone said " backwire" how about copperclad aluminum for weak links? and yes the old swapped neutral or "shared neutral, or ???
I'd have ta be there to enjoy this situationat all,from here it just makes me nervous.
The circuit is PROBABLY safe to use, but do you want to rest the safety of your family on probabilities?