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Need of Electrician's advice.....

post #1 of 4
7/7/09 at 2:00am
Thread Starter 

 Okay, not sure if this is the place to start this thread but I'm in dire need of advice. Of course the 2 electricians I phoned didn't answer, probably because it is a                      Sunday so I'm reaching out to CD. We have a 30 year old house and probably with the original electricial. Now, I'm upstairs vaccuming, and the vaccum shuts off from it's outlet along with 5 other outlets throughout the house. Now normally, if a fuse blows, I just press the button in the fusebox and it goes back on. This time, none of the buttons needed to be pressed and when I went back to check all the outlets, all 5 of them are now not working. Is this something that can wait till morning until I can hunt down an electrician? Of course I'm worried about a fire with a family of six, my DH knows nothing about this issue and I'm panicked. Can anyone reassure me? Please only those that may be sure about this. Jeannie

 

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post #2 of 4
7/7/09 at 3:05pm
Obviously, this is not the best place for true emergency troubleshooting, nor the best for fast turn-around.

However, that said, I'll take a stab, with a major caveot:

1. I AM NOT AN ELECTRICIAN.  I don't even play one on TV.

Q1: is this an emergency?  It depends.  Two possibilities come to mind as a likely cause of the symptoms.

1a: the wire came free in the electrical panel; no current is flowing (particularly if it's the hot.)  But I don't think this is particularly likely, given the other conditions.

1b: the wire came free in the first outlet in the chain, and no current SHOULD be flowing.  Chances are good that nothing is happening, or the breaker should have tripped.  

In either case, until someone qualified to check on it can check on it, turn off the breaker.  This is also perhaps useful for the next round of diagnosis.

Once the breaker is off, physically feel the outlet plates with your hand, or a non-contact thermometer.  Are any of them warm?  Hot?

Question 2: why does the vacuum cleaner trip the breaker?  That's a deeper, more fundamental problem, and it shouldn't.  There's something wrong THERE, and it might have come to a head with this last incident.  "Problem" might merely be a loose wire that finally worked free.  IT MIGHT ALSO BE WORSE; I'M NOT AN ELECTRICIAN, AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON IN YOUR WALLS!!!

Does any of this help?

Leo
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post #3 of 4
7/7/09 at 5:49pm
1.  DISCLAIMER:  I am not an electrician, either.  Follow the advice below at your own risk.

Since you're talking about pressing buttons instead of replacing fuses, I assume you don't have a "fuse box", you have a circuit breaker panel.  Even though none of the breakers appears to be tripped, your first step should still be to turn each of them off and back on, just in case. 

Next thing to check:  Did you trip a GFCI switch?  A GFCI is a ground-fault circuit interrupter, a device built into electrical outlets that are installed in proximity to areas where water is used.  (Typically bathrooms, kitchen, laundry rooms.)  They are designed to kill all the outlets on the shared circuit if a grounding issue is detected - which would typically happen with a short circuit caused by water.  They are there to keep you from frying yourself if you drop the hair dryer into the tub.  

There are other things that can cause a GFCI to trip, and once it does it will remain tripped until it is reset.  GFCI-equipped outlets typically have two buttons, one red and one black. 

GFCI Outlet

If the circuit is tripped, the red button will pop out.  You need to push it in until it clicks.  At that point all the outlets on the same GFCI circuit should come back on.  You may need to go from room to room until you find the particular outlet that tripped, but if this is the source of the problem it should be a simple fix. 

Let us know what you find.

Joe
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post #4 of 4
7/7/09 at 5:53pm
P.S.

No, this really isn't remotely the right area for your post.    You might want to contact a mod and asked to have it moved to either the After Hours Lounge (which I think would be most appropriate) or at least the Member's Home Theaters and Projects area, which is where the guys who know about construction and electrical work hang out.

Good luck,

Joe
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