I'm stumped... Room no power, all breakers are fine...
 

need help before i have to start tearing into the sheet rock...

my niece was in her room, space heater in one outlet, and using the hair dryer in the other outlet... pop the power goes out in that room... go downstairs and check the breaker box... none look tripped...

ok so i manually shut off every switch to the house completely off and on to make sure i reset the breaker... still no power to the outlets in her room...

i take off the panel on the box to see if any of the CB switches are melted or a wire came loose... tested for power and all showed a good ~120V out of the switch...

i checked at the outlets in her room and it is only registering ~5V... there are no GFCI's upstream on that line that would have tripped on the line after the CB... any suggestions before i have to start tearing into my drywall to trace down the line???

should i try swapping out the outlets???

Do the light switches in the room turn on the lights?
If yes, it may be the outlet.

If the light switches don't turn on the lights, then you may have blown a small breaker. Even though a breaker doesn't look like it tripped, if one feels loose on wiggling, it's probably bad and must be replaced.

I had this happen at my house a few months ago-- only one breaker was bad, so half of the outlets and light switches in corners of the house worked.

^ Agreed, try wiggling the CB and feel if any are loose. Be very careful to not touch any exposed wires. Try swapping out the outlets if that doesn't work.

It's possible the circuit breaker is bad.

Or, depending on how your house is wired, it could be a junction somewhere fried.

In my house, and my parents house, everything on a given circuit is connected in a chain. It's possible the first junction/chain fried killing everything after that point. :shrug:

My parents had a loose neutral wire in their circuit breaker box that caused power issues in the garage. Nothing worked, but connecting an outlet tester indicated that there was a problem with the neutral wire. Pick up one of these and give it a try:

http://www.acmehowto.com/howto/homem...tlettester.jpg

+1 on outlet tester

I had a breaker box go on me before, piece of junk.

^ agree

is it coincidence that something like this would fail in an overload? if the line just went out for no reason then i woul be quick to blame a wire or something in the infrstructure failing... but because it was a line overload, i would be more prone to think it is a breaker...

but i will hit up home depot tonight to pick up a replacement circuit breaker... as i was inspecting one looked cracked so ill replace it anyway... while im at it ill pick up a outlet tester and report back...

Wow...talk about weird. I just had the same thing happen to me at my house too.

Room 1 and Room 2 are wired on one CB. Room 1 had a space heater plugged into one outlet and then one night...boom. Not working anymore...but just on that outlet. The rest of the outlets in Room 1 works...but there's absolutely no power in Room 2. Light switch doesn't work and no power to any of the outlets in Room 2.

I tripped the switch in the fuse box. Turned it off and as it should...both rooms 1 & 2 have no power. Turn the switch back on and only room 1 has power...all except for that one outlet which the space heater was plugged into. Room 2 still doesn't have any power.

Thoughts? Would that one dead outlet that the space heater was plugged into shorted the loop going to that outlet and to the 2nd room?

:ohsnap:
http://www.ask-the-electrician.com/w...tlet-problems/

thanks for this... i will def have to look at the outlet more closely this weekend... i don't have time this week, esp with the snow coming... and my niece is fine with an extension for now...

Yeah, weird... what a coincidence; we just replaced our breaker box a couple weeks ago because the buss bar was bad. But for you, I would definitely replace that cracked breaker switch first and check out the outlets before digging into the drywall.

I had an outlet the stop working a while back. I finally pulled the outlet out about month or so ago to check things out. The hot wire actually broke inside the box. A lot of the wiring in the house is really old. I think when changing everything over to decora style, and pushing the wires back in the box, it probably put a little bit too hard of a bend and it snapped. It didn't happen right away, but about a year and a half after I switch the outlets out. Not saying this is what happened to you, but if everything is daisy chained from one outlet to the next on that circuit, then everything after that outlet would not have any power if something similar happened.

This happened EXACTLY like this in a friends house while I was over. It was built in 2007 and his wife had plugged in a vaccum into a wall outlet when all the power went off in Room 2. Room 1 on the same breaker still had power!

He called in an electrician and he opened up the light switches and took a look at the wires. He mentioned something about a neutral drop and then shorted a wire tripping the fuse this time. Friend went downstairs to turn back on the fuse while I was in Room 2 with the electrician. Bam! Power's working again!

Essentially my buddy paid 100 dollars to have someone come and "short" out the wires to reset the breaker. Just sharing my experience! If you do anything like I said, I take no responsibility for anything including jump starting yourself or your house!

You're not running that space heater off the extension cord are you?

hell no...

just a lamp so she has some light in her room...

:thumbsup:

my god these older Federal Pacific type breaker switches are expensive... $40!!! wow!!!

Count yourself lucky. Our panel started with Zinsco breakers; a replacement 20A made by Connecticut Electric cost $65 at Home Depot. :ugh:

Fortunately, these things don't usually go bad.

Thanks! I'll take a look at it.

Sorry for the hijack KaMLuNg :tomato:

Sounds like you guys are having the same problem. Like thunder said, go get an outlet tester. It will probably read an open neutral (system ground) or open hot wire or something.

How old are your houses/wiring? The outlet probably became overloaded and knocked a wire off of an outlet when it sparked, or fried the outlet itself. I've seen it happen pretty commonly on older wiring/receptacles/switches when they aren't secured correctly and come loose. It might be such a small disconnect that it may be hard to see, so I recommend killing the breaker and pulling the outlet away from the box to get a good look and to check for burn marks and other bad connections. Hopefully they have the correct breaker for the wire size.

If you have metal boxes and no safety ground, a wire could be grounding to that or the outlet itself since it wouldn't trip the breaker without it, so be careful there.

It could be a breaker or other things, but it really doesn't sound like it :thumbsup:

Update request-- was the problem a breaker, outlet, shorted wiring in the wall, or something else?

will be tackling in a few hours... just got back from seeing Airplane! in theater and got my free poster...

:woot:

ok so 4 hrs at it yesterday and i have only been able to pull off a better temp fix...

so i checked the outlets and they were fine... outlet tester showed open hot as i suspected since my meter showed absolutely 0v at the lines on the outlet... i traced the line down into the basement ceiling (80% is a drop ceiling with ceiling tiles, rest is sheetrocked)

i found the line in the same area as a weird junction box (except the weird junction box was in a basement bedroom that was competely drywalled... :whyme::whyme::whyme:) busted a hole into the ceiling to get to the box... tested the box and the power was good in that box...

the line from the upstairs outlet however then was routed further down... and then disappears back upstairs to the first floor... :annoyed::annoyed::annoyed: right where the line goes back upstairs, there were 3-4 other lines going up in that same area... 1 of the lines which comes from the direction of the utility room... so i concluded that they must have buried a junction box in the wall of the 1st fl :angry:

so i said f' it... i cut the line for the outlet... capped off the side that went off into the abyss and tapped the outlet side it into the weird junction box where i busted a hole in the room of the basement window...

when i get back from my business trip and it warms up, i'll most likely run a new dedicated line on the breaker box for that bedroom, seems a bit overkill for just 2 outlets in a bedroom... but at least i know that it won't be spliced all over the place and disappearing into walls... i'll eventually have to find that junction box that is in the wall too since i can imagine the other wires going into that box will one day also go bad...

i'll get some pics up tonight...

i don't understand how this passed inspection... there are covered junction boxes all over the ceiling it is like a freakin maze...

i looked at the sticker on the breaker box and the date showed 1986... when my dad bought the house...

Some electricians really take some shortcuts.

Who said they were electricians? Could be Messcans.

the house was built by the former owner who was a contractor... we knew he took shortcuts from some of the other stuff we discovered when we renovated the 1st fl of the house so i should have known that these electrical shennanigans were waiting for me...

just going around the house and testing some of the outlets with the tester i bought, there were tons of open grounds and even some came back with hot/neutral wires reversed... i mean seriously??? im far from an electrician but can wire an outlet properly...

Wow Kam that sucks. Unfortunately I used to see it all the time when I was doing electric full time.

My brother's house is the same way...previous owner thought he was good by wiring it himself but he had no idea what he was doing. My sister's house was built by a builder and it isn't much better. Not a single breaker was labeled on either house which I think is what pissed me off the most out of all the problems they had :whyme:

I've gone through and pretty much renovated the whole thing. Found junction boxes everywhere which is one of my pet peeves since a whole house can be wired without ever needing one of them.

It's hard to say what could've happened in your situation without being there. I guess good luck and keep us updated...I'd really like to know the culprit.

i borrowed my friend's stud finder which can detect electrical inside the wall... so when i get back from my trip, i will attempt to find the junction box that is buried... i suspect maybe when the line was overloaded, maybe the hot wire came off???

will update...

G/L and be careful with the :electric: if it's weird wiring!

A contractor owned my house for 30+ years before me, but he had a good electrical contractor do the work. He gave us the blueprints, permits and diagrams for the improvements and wiring of the house along with instructions and original paperwork for all the appliances, faucets, showerheads, etc., so that was a big help in locating parts as needed.

^^ sounds like Mike Holmes quality...

Really hard to tell man...wish I could help more. Have you found any wire nuts that they installed and inspected them? A lot of people just stick two (or three or four or...) wire ends together and just cap it without twisting the wires beforehand. If they did one that way I'm sure they did them all.

That was a pretty common problem when I was doing troubleshooting work on existing houses. One of the wires would eventually jump out because of tension and would occasionally ground itself out causing even bigger problems.

Wow, that's awesome :thumbsup:

If/when I build a house I'm doing something similar, plus pictures of all the walls pre-drywall, so along with the blueprints I'll know where everything is and isn't.