Posted: 7/6/2012 7:19:20 PM EDT
| I just noticed that the lights and alarm clock in my bedroom were off, as well as the window AC unit. All the other outlets in the house appear to be working fine. No breakers are tripped in the house electrical panel, and no GFCI is tripped either. I tried resetting the breakers and GFCI just in case, with no change in behavior. It appears a couple of outlets in the BR have lost power. I tried running the AC unit from a different outlet in the same room, it works fine. Any suggestions? |
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Quoted:
if it's a newer house, your bedrooms have arc fault protectors at the breaker box. they trip fairly easily when a motor (AC units have several motors) is plugged in. Check for tripped arc fault protectors. That would kill all receptacles, lights, and smokies in the bedrooms. Seems he just has a short run dead, like the last 4-5 of a circuit. |
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Quoted: Power daisy-chains from one receptacle to another. Somewhere the chain is broken, and there is an open hot or neutral. Time to pull each receptacle on each side of the outage zone and look for the issue. likely this... installer probably fed through each of the recepticals rather than bug in the back of each box.. one of the tabs is probably burned open. You might be able to find easily if you find one receptical that is only half working (ie top works, bottom does not) |
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The other thing that could be the problem is half of your power is not there. To check, see if any of your 220V outlets are working. If one leg going to neutral, or ground shows voltage, and the other does not, then the transformer to the house blew one leg. I've had that happen before.
The above about a broken daisy chain is the more likely culprit, however. |
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Window shakers in the summer and space heaters in the winter keep electricians busy.
If you been running an AC unit in that bedroom, the high current draw has caused a weak connection to fail. Outlets in question probably have the wires stabbed in and retained by spring tension, not tightened under screws. How old is the house? As the poster above stated, turn off the breaker that feeds that room and look for bad connections to either side of the "bad" outlets. Have any electrical testers? |
| Thanks for the comments, gentlemen. I'll have a look at the problem. Makes me wonder if there was any fire danger... I have a habit of leaving the window AC unit running when not at home. And no, no smoke came out. No electrical/burning smell noticed. The house is maybe 30 years old. I have never seen an outlet fail, here or anywhere. |
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Quoted:
Thanks for the comments, gentlemen. I'll have a look at the problem. Makes me wonder if there was any fire danger... I have a habit of leaving the window AC unit running when not at home. And no, no smoke came out. No electrical/burning smell noticed. The house is maybe 30 years old. I have never seen an outlet fail, here or anywhere. Flickering lights or power is far worse than an outage. |
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This thread reminds me of something.
I was over at a buddies house one time and he said, "Hey, you know a lot about electrical stuff, I want you to see if this is normal or not". He led me off to an upstairs room and said, "Feel that light switch". I touched it and it was hotter than hell. I told him to go through the breaker and I pulled the panel and the whole backside of the switch was black, melted and smoldering. He said that it had been doing that for at least the last couple of weeks but since the switch still worked he figured it wasn't a big deal. 
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Well, I found the problem––had a bad connection at one of the outlets in the room. Yes, it was a back stabbed connection, and oddly enough it was on the far side of the room from the outlet the AC was hooked to. I probably hadn't used the bad outlet in ten years or more, too. Thanks again for the advice, gents!
Here's a site I found very helpful: http://www.thecircuitdetective.com/tsing.htm#open And a page further in, about finding open circuits: http://www.thecircuitdetective.com/treeopen.htm |