Advice on home electrical repairs.

[Sharps40]

Spent 4 hours yesterday cleaning the front porch. Stiles, rails, balusters, siding, window frames. Much soap, water, scrubbing and rinsing. Lost power at the porch outlet and to the fountain that taps off that connector box.

Before you initiate early morning chemical warfare with the wasps under the deck access to the crawlspace, armed only with a screwdriver, flashlight and a bottle of bug spray....

Before you allow your fancy ohmmeter to convince you the dead circuit has a broken wire.....

Before you remove the 30 year old and very brittle vinyl siding surrounding the dead porch outlet.....

Before you disassemble 5 outlets in 4 locations searching for the lead to the dead porch outlet.....

Before you take a ladder down under the house into the crawlspace sump so you can trace and remove the supposedly broken stretch of cable.....

Before you find no damage to the supposedly broken stretch of cable using your fancy volt ohm meter........

Before you reinstall the now proven functional stretch of romex cable fishing it back up through the wall with a length of flimsy coat hanger......

Be sure to go into the Girls bathroom......

Hidden behind the lovely crystal night light is the Ground Fault Interruptor switch for the bathroom power and ...... That dead socket on the front porch.

I pressed the button......

The power is restored.

 

[9outof10mms]

KISS...and not that stupid band!

I’m a certified specialist in forgetting to KISS.

 

[Tailhunter]

You and @fieldgrade would make a good team.

 

[rdinatal]

I was just going to say check all GFIs.

How do I know? Guess...

 

[fieldgrade]

You and @fieldgrade would make a good team.

He'll have to up his game. I usually shock myself with 240 volts when I do electrical work.

It keeps me alert...
so I don't shock myself.

 

[Jp8819]

Been there with my laundry room outlets that are fed from a gfci outlet in bathroom. One day wife says this outlet doesn’t work in the laundry room so I start searching and moving things out the way and fussing to myself the whole time at all the mess in the way and every outlet i keep moving up the line is dead. About 1.5 hrs into this the wife says you know the other day this little light came on at the bathroom outlet when I plugged my hair dryer in. Me what light? Go look and press reset button and everything starts working. Grumble to myself again and go put everyting back thinking It would have been more enjoyable and quicker to just stick my finger in the outlets without the gfci.