How can i determine what is wrong with my electricity in one one that is not working?
Question:i have switched out breaker and the outlets and lights wont come back on, every now and then it will come on for a couple of hours, but when try to turn on switch light come on for one second then all goes dead. this happened when my wife was vacuuming and made the light and stuff i had plugged in go dead.. i went back to the breaker box and nothing was tripped at all. so then i went thru all breakers and turned off then on, it wouldnt come back up... so then next day the lights all of a sudden came back on by themsleves. what could have happend when the vacuum was turned on? did it melt wires? its a 20 amp circuit, i had a computer, monitor, router, phone, and an alarm clock plugged into it and thats it... please help..
Answers:
You need to call an electrician. Without seeing the house myself I can't really say but I think you may have one of the hot legs out at the service entrance. If you have a volt/ohm meter (a good one) you can check the voltage across the two hot legs, it should be around 240VAC and 120VAC from each hot leg to neutral.
Here is something to try also: if you have an electric dryer and/or electric cooking range turn one of them on. If the 'phantom' lights work when you do this then that is the problem.
Either way, call an electrician.
you need an electrician before your house burns down.if your electric goes out but no breakers are thrown this is dangerous because it means there is a short somewhere in the house that is cutting the supply off to that area or outlet.
You've got a loose connection. Determine which junction boxes, outlets and light boxes are on the circuit and remove the covers from all of them and see if you can find a loose wire on an outlet or anything else in the circuit. If not, you must take wire nuts off, retwist the wires and put the nuts back on until its fixed.
Sounds like you may have a 'short' in one or more of your electric wires, plug-ins, sockets, a lamp or an appliance. If a wire is not connected tightly, it could at times work and other times not work.
There are testing instruments that electricians use to find such problems. If you do not know that much about electricity, it would be best to call an electrician. A short could cause a fire.
You have a lot of things plugged in to that one circuit breaker. Not necessarily load wise, but any one could be shorting the others out. So each one should be checked to see if one of them is causing the electricity to go out. Don't forget, if the appliances are OK, check the wall plugs, there could be a loose connection there. If you are not an electrician or knowledgeable about such things, it's nothing to fool around with. However if you do try it, MAKE SURE THE CIRCUIT BREAKER IS OFF while you're checking for loose wires.
You mentioned the vacuum causing the electricity to go off. Check it first. Take it to a different plug-in having a different circuit breaker than the other place it was used when the electricity went off. It could be it was causing an extra load on the circuit breaker...although, a 20 amp breaker should have been able to handle that, and if the breaker had been tripped, you would have seen that when you checked them.
I would caution you to be careful checking any electrical wiring when the circuit breaker is still on. Be SAFE-NOT-SORRY and call an electrician.
Yes. there is a short it the circuit, an electrician is required.
call an electrician to check your shorts
Look for a loose wire on one of your outlets. I've had that problem quite often as a Maintenance Man at an apartment complex .
You may have to check them all but I would bet that's your problem.
The Ideal products are quite dependable for the purpose they were designed for.
You have 15 outlets on a 15 amp breaker. Do you mean plugs or outlets. Outlets are plugs and lights. Now how many outlets are on that circuit.
There are only supposed to be 12 outlets, maximum, per circuit.
Likely an overload, but hard to find from here. Get an electrician to check it out, before you burn your house down.
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