Well this is what's going on... (this is really long)
My fiance and I just bought a house last week and after we got moved in we started to get everything setup, and we decided to put our mini fridge in the living room(We are lacking furniture). I had just defrosted it and wiped it down so I brought it into the living room and plugged it in, and when I did this half of the house lost power. By half of the house I mean the living room, hallway, the bathroom plug and one light, and the master bedroom.
I first thought we tripped a breaker so I went out to the garage to turn it back on, and I found that non had tripped. So assuming that it did not trip completely I flipped the breaker labeled for that section of the house, and nothing happened. So then I decided to reset every breaker one by one and still that didn't help. My next guess was that there was a gfci somewhere that I had missed so I went around and searched the house 3 times and found not a single gfci.
This is about the time I got really confused and pissed... I went up to the attic to see if I could find anything and to also try and think. I thought I might have missed something out front so I came down and unplugged the shop light for the garage and headed out the front door. This is when she said what did I do because everything is back on... I was confused and said that it was weird.
This all happened a few more times over the last couple of days and I slowly found more and more clues to what was going on... kind of... I realized that the lights would come back on if I plugged the shop light in sometimes... but this could also make it go out. I tracked down what some of the other lights and switches were connected to and what not.
But I did not finally notice that the living room circuit branched off that one garage plug until last night. I decided to pull the cover off of that garage outlet so I turned off the breaker and was just looking and thats when she said that side of the house just went out.
So here is everything that is on this breaker(I still need to map everything out to be 100% positive):
1 garage outlet, 3 living room outlets and a light, hallway outlet and light, the bath room outlet and light, and 3 master bedroom outlets and a light.
To me this seems like a lot and it needs to be split up, also the weirdest thing about our problem is that when the power would go out to half of the house the garage outlet still worked. The reason why they have been using a shop light is because the actual fixture in the garage does not work. I pulled the fixture out to look at the wiring and there is a hot and neutral but no bare ground and I is only getting 20v.
All of the wiring that I have seen in the house is romex and the house was built in 1971. It has a cutler hammer box with a 100amp main, 3 240v breakers, a couple of the large size single poles, and two of the slimlines that have two breakers instead of one. There are 3 open spots at the bottom of the box and two more at the top next to the main breaker. This box has 20 slots in it.
If there is anything else that I left out just say something or if you need more info let me know. Thanks
Chris
My fiance and I just bought a house last week and after we got moved in we started to get everything setup, and we decided to put our mini fridge in the living room(We are lacking furniture). I had just defrosted it and wiped it down so I brought it into the living room and plugged it in, and when I did this half of the house lost power. By half of the house I mean the living room, hallway, the bathroom plug and one light, and the master bedroom.
I first thought we tripped a breaker so I went out to the garage to turn it back on, and I found that non had tripped. So assuming that it did not trip completely I flipped the breaker labeled for that section of the house, and nothing happened. So then I decided to reset every breaker one by one and still that didn't help. My next guess was that there was a gfci somewhere that I had missed so I went around and searched the house 3 times and found not a single gfci.
This is about the time I got really confused and pissed... I went up to the attic to see if I could find anything and to also try and think. I thought I might have missed something out front so I came down and unplugged the shop light for the garage and headed out the front door. This is when she said what did I do because everything is back on... I was confused and said that it was weird.
This all happened a few more times over the last couple of days and I slowly found more and more clues to what was going on... kind of... I realized that the lights would come back on if I plugged the shop light in sometimes... but this could also make it go out. I tracked down what some of the other lights and switches were connected to and what not.
But I did not finally notice that the living room circuit branched off that one garage plug until last night. I decided to pull the cover off of that garage outlet so I turned off the breaker and was just looking and thats when she said that side of the house just went out.
So here is everything that is on this breaker(I still need to map everything out to be 100% positive):
1 garage outlet, 3 living room outlets and a light, hallway outlet and light, the bath room outlet and light, and 3 master bedroom outlets and a light.
To me this seems like a lot and it needs to be split up, also the weirdest thing about our problem is that when the power would go out to half of the house the garage outlet still worked. The reason why they have been using a shop light is because the actual fixture in the garage does not work. I pulled the fixture out to look at the wiring and there is a hot and neutral but no bare ground and I is only getting 20v.
All of the wiring that I have seen in the house is romex and the house was built in 1971. It has a cutler hammer box with a 100amp main, 3 240v breakers, a couple of the large size single poles, and two of the slimlines that have two breakers instead of one. There are 3 open spots at the bottom of the box and two more at the top next to the main breaker. This box has 20 slots in it.
If there is anything else that I left out just say something or if you need more info let me know. Thanks
Chris
