Baffling home electric problem

mdaudioguy

One of the circuits in my house that supplies power to my sons' bedroom and an attached bathroom has been going dead - with the exception of a single outlet in the bathroom. The circuit breaker has not tripped. I even tried switching a couple breakers to test them out, and that's definitely not the problem. So, there's power coming out of the breaker box, but somewhere along the line... it ends.

What's baffling me is this one outlet - it seems to be at the end of the run, because there's only one wire coming into the box, and it's definitely hot. I've been pulling switch and outlet covers and checking inside with a voltage tester, and so far I haven't found any other hot wires. Suggestions before I lose my mind, and possibly my entire weekend?

Oh yeah, and sometimes the power comes back on. It's been off and on like this for about 3 weeks now, and until last night, it had been on for 5 days straight. Of course, it's hard to troubleshoot when it's working...

Serendipity

Loose neutral?

mdaudioguy

Could be, but if there's a hot wire leaving the breaker box, I'd have to find it somewhere, right?

Serendipity

Yes. Keep in mind some electrical boxes are used for more than one circuit.

Serendipity

The last time I had this happen it was a loose neutral.

mdaudioguy

So, pull every switch, outlet, and light fixture and check them? In one of them I should find a hot wire going in, but not passing through, due to the loose neutral (or a bad outlet/switch), right?

Serendipity

In my case, on the dead outlets if you measured from hot to ground you got 120V, but from hot to neutral there was nothing. So a loose neutral prevented the downstream outlets from working (two of them), but everything else was working fine.

Serendipity

mdaudioguy wrote: »

So, pull every switch, outlet, and light fixture and check them? In one of them I should find a hot wire going in, but not passing through, due to the loose neutral (or a bad outlet/switch), right?

Not necessarily. If you have a loose or disconnected hot somewhere along the way, the downstream outlets should have nothing on the hot when measured to ground. A loose neutral, at least when I had this problem, showed up as 120V hot to ground but nothing when measured hot to neutral.

You also may have a combination of the cases but I'm betting it's one of the above...

On3s&Z3r0s

That's definitely weird. Could it be that one leg of the circuit is wired in parallel in one of the outlet boxes and the other leg is wired in series and something is loose on one of the series wired outlets? Do you have an outlet tester? If so, you could hit all the outlets on that circuit next time the power is out. If it was an open neutral that should be easy-ish to detect.

Serendipity

Household circuits are not wired in series, only in parallel.

Disc Jockey

Also, check all of your GFI outlets. I had one of my outlets that kept going out in my bathroom and it was on the same circuit as the outside outlets for some reason. It was the outside outlet that was the problem.

On3s&Z3r0s

Serendipity wrote: »

Household circuits are not wired in series, only in parallel.

Is that per NEC? I wired quite a few circuits in series where both cables, entering and leaving the box, are connected to the receptacle and the receptacle is part of the circuit rather than being pigtailed into it. I think that's common and the inspectors didn't say anything was wrong with it.

Serendipity

mdaudioguy wrote: »

What's baffling me is this one outlet - it seems to be at the end of the run, because there's only one wire coming into the box, and it's definitely hot.

Is this outlet not working? You say that this wire is "definitely hot" but no mention of if the outlet is working or not.

On3s&Z3r0s

Disc Jockey wrote: »

Also, check all of your GFI outlets. I had one of my outlets that kept going out in my bathroom and it was on the same circuit as the outside outlets for some reason. It was the outside outlet that was the problem.

That's a good point. That one has bit me in my kitchen before (where there is one GFCI at the head of the circuit protecting the downstream receptacles). But someone would have to be resetting it to restore power.

Serendipity

On3s&Z3r0s wrote: »

Is that per NEC? I wired quite a few circuits in series where both cables, entering and leaving the box, are connected to the receptacle and the receptacle is part of the circuit rather than being pigtailed into it. I think that's common and the inspectors didn't say anything was wrong with it.

That is still in parallel.

mrbigbluelight

mdaudioguy, do you have an outlet that's located behind a bed ?

That may account for the "Here Today-Gone Tomorrow" problem.
Works one day, then somebody plops down on the bed and knocks the bedframe into whatever's plugged in (night stand, etc).
Dead outlets until the next time somebody plops down on the bed hard enough to knock the bedframe into whatever's plugged in and .... VOILA ! .... outlets downstream now work !

If your last outlet is definitely hot, then it would seem like the neutral's getting knocked out downstream from the funky outlet.

mrbiron

Hung and new pictures or sheetrock recently?

mdaudioguy

The one outlet I mentioned is working. There are no GFIs on the circuit, although that one working outlet is where I'd expect one to be - right next to the sink. Looks like I'll be opening up everything and checking wires on Easter. The bed situation could be it. I'll check those outlets first.

sucks2beme

Sounds like you are going to need to go through it one outlet at a time and
look for breaks/loose connections. Better kill the breaker and start pulling covers.
There isn't going to be any magic fix. More of a Easter egg hunt.
There may be an attic or basement box that breaks out the leg that
never stops working. Maybe one of those tone tracer kits would also help.
Those kind of problems always take time.

Vette C6.r

I think you should give me your O's tickets until you figure this out.

mdaudioguy

Vette C6.r wrote: »

I think you should give me your O's tickets until you figure this out.

If they keep giving up 15 runs per game, I will.

dave shepard

Disc Jockey wrote: »

Also, check all of your GFI outlets. I had one of my outlets that kept going out in my bathroom and it was on the same circuit as the outside outlets for some reason. It was the outside outlet that was the problem.

That's what I was going to suggest. You could have a GFI outlet going bad and it trips itself when it gets warm and resets when it cools back down.

Dave

nadams

Keep in mind that the one live outlet might not be getting its power from another "dead" outlet. Situations like this are exactly the reason that it's not code to have hidden junction boxes... you're tracing problems in outlet boxes, but it very well could be at a hidden junction point that you won't find unless you tear the walls down.

mdaudioguy

SUCCESS!!!!!:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

So, I pulled 8 outlets, 5 switches, the bathroom exhaust fan/light combo, and the vanity light, and found nothing wrong. Frustrated, I turned to the internet, convinced that Serendipity?s loose neutral theory had to be the problem I was dealing with. I stumbled upon this site: http://www.thecircuitdetective.com. It gave me some good ideas, and provided me with an orderly process to go about finding the problem. I decided that the circuit might not be confined to these two rooms. Near as I could tell, there are two circuits on the second floor, but with all these dead outlets, it was hard to tell which was which. I decided to start checking outlets in the next bedroom, which seemed to all have power.

Somewhere on that website, the guy mentions simply pounding on the wall around an outlet or switch to see if that disturbs the loose wire enough to turn the circuit back on. Since the power was intermittently on and off for a couple weeks, I decided that this might be a good approach. I pounded the walls around a few outlets with my fist, when I noticed an unused outlet on the wall adjoining the problem bedroom and bathroom. Too lazy to bend down and pound with my fist, I decided to kick the wall with my bare foot? kick, kick, YES - the power came back on in the boys room for the first time in over a week!

Pulled out the offending outlet, and sure enough, one of those cheapo, push-in spring connections on the back of the outlet. The spring had weakened such that I could easily just pull one of the wires right out. Pulled it out and screwed that suck down tight using the side terminal right next to it.

What a frustrating problem, but it feels good to have fixed it myself, and I didn?t have to spend any part of my Saturday to cross that one off my to-do list.

Thanks, everybody - especially Serendipity, for your advice and encouragement!

Time to go put the end of the O's game on the big screen and crank up the tunes!

Polkersince85

Percussive maintenance works with a lot of things. Congrats

nooshinjohn

mdaudioguy wrote: »

Too lazy to bend down and pound with my fist, I decided to kick the wall with my bare foot? kick, kick, YES - the power came back on in the boys room for the first time in over a week!

Maybe we should start calling you The Fonz!

txcoastal1

Remember when we used to beat the crap out the old TV...it usually worked

WagnerRC

Cingrats on finding the problem!

billbillw

I'm late to the thread, but I see you got the same advice I would have given. I had the same problem last year and it was loose connections just like what you found.

Serendipity

mdaudioguy wrote: »

SUCCESS!!!!!:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

Thanks, everybody - especially Serendipity, for your advice and encouragement!

Time to go put the end of the O's game on the big screen and crank up the tunes!

No problem! Glad you got it fixed!

disneyjoe7

Glad to see you fixed it.