Electrical Problem

Dan Mooney

Member
Messages
1,920
Location
Portland, Oregon
I came home from work yesterday morning, no porch light (which I had left on) Okay bad bulb no problem, came in the house, lamps off also, Hmmm.

Checked the breakers, all on. had 3 recptacles and the porch light out, I had a surge protector/power strip plugged into the bottom hole of another wall recptacle, I plugged in a circuit tester into the top hole, and had power, so I unplugged the power strip from the bottom hole to test it, and all the lights came on.

Turns out the bottom half of the wall recptacle was bad and when you plugged into the bottom hole it opened all the circuits down line from it.

Could have been a nightmare to trouble shoot, but like Don Garlits the old Drag Racer once said "I'd rather be lucky then good and day!"
 
Very lucky find.

I just replaced all the outlets and switches in our great room over the weekend.

Some of the 'shortcuts' the previous "E-lectrician" took were quite annoying...

Some of the old outlets wouldn't even hold a plug anymore they were so worn out.

Even got to experiment with troubleshooting how to get a 3-way switch to work...
 
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