A few years ago, for no known reason, all the outlets in a downstairs room stopped working, but one on a different wall. No breakers were flipped. I assumed that the one was on a different circuit. FYI, the outlets are not GFI. The problem was not addressed, I just stopped using the outlets that didn't work.
Recently the same thing happened to a few outlets in an upstairs room. Then a couple weeks later all the outlets downstairs that didn't worked suddenly did and the one that did work now doesn't. Also, at the same time the outlets that didn't work upstairs now do and the couple that did work now don't along with a kitchen light on the ceiling and the hall light on the ceiling, both upstairs.
Remember, no breakers where flipped at any of these issues and no work was done on any of the outlets flip flopping around. Can anything explain this event? Please help.
By Vinny L.
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You need a licensed and insured electrician in to look over your house wiring, and you need to do it now. It sounds as though you have lost connections all over your house between the outlets and the breaker-which is why none flipped.
Depending on the age of your home, your troubles could be anything from faulty and/or counterfeit wiring when the house was built (a lot of building materials coming in from China, Mexico, and India have been found to be counterfeit or badly constructed including wiring, circuit breakers, and boxes which were then stamped with a fake UL), worn wires, rodents chewing, or pest infestation in the wall.
Only a licensed professional can tell you what is wrong and how to resolve the issue BEFORE your house burns down.
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We are in the middle of remodeling a kitchen. We have moved appliances to our laundry room, including refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven, coffee maker, and washing machine.
This has been a long project, started on Mother's day. The first 3 months everything was OK. Well, first the washing machine quit working fully, if you flipped the breaker it would start up, but when it went into spin it would quit and the breaker would not flip off. Next the 2 outlets on the wall went out, microwave and refrigerator, but the 2 outlets above my counter top, which are on same circuit, were OK. Then yesterday, (1 month later) when running the microwave, it ran OK the first 2 times I used it, but the third time all power was lost to that circuit. I thought I smelled something hot, but it went away. (That was during the first 2 minute cycle I put it through.) There is a GFI circuit on that plug and neither the GFI nor the breakers flipped off, but when flipping manually the power comes back on.
I just went and flipped the breaker back on, (we turned it off last night, fire fear) and used a night light to check power. All outlets are working. What the heck. Should we be very concerned or are we just overloading the circuit? Does anyone think this will go away when kitchen appliances get moved back into kitchen?
By Carol
Carol, you should get a electrician to locate the problem before there is a serious electrical fire. The cost of a qualified professional is a lot less than replacing your home and possessions and maybe personal injury.
Get a licensed electrician before you burn your house down! You have a serious problem!
You do have a serious problem, and here's why-you are clearly overloading the circuits yet your GFI isn't kicking in, and that is a very serious problem!
GFI is meant to 'flip' in an overload and because yours is not, it means you have a wiring problem. The 'hot' smell was very likely a wire melting inside your walls, and even though you are turning off the power in that room at night you still could have a fire situation developing.
As stated by the other posters, you need to get a professional in there NOW to track down the problem! Use a different company or independent contractor than the one who installed the GFI, as it's clear from your question that your wiring was not installed correctly.
Good luck and please update us. Your homeowner's insurance should cover the cost of the electrician, and you may be able to recover any other costs from the company responsible for the faulty wiring if that turns out to be the problem.
Carol,
Once we had some very odd things going on with the power in our house. We had only partial power on some of the circuits. We ended up calling our power company. They checked our incoming power.
