Any Electricians Around?

[EtOH]

Done some more checking.

- House was built in 1968, can't find any GFCI outlets in the entire house
- Power is out to the entire room, overhead light
- Power is out to the overhead light in the closet next to the room
- Overhead light is out in the room next to it, but the rest of the outlets in that room seem fine.

Gonna start looking at the breaker and the outlets next.

Any other suggestions?

 

[us3rnotfound]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: us3rnotfound

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: us3rnotfound
Is not a GFI recept wired in Parallel? When this trips it becomes an open and doesn't affect anything down the line, right?

Not really. Most of the time it's wired in series so that it's protection is still in place for any devices connected down the line.

The problems arise when you have older construction homes sharing the same circuit between multiple rooms (kitchen/living room, bedroom/bathrooms). Most people don't realize this or they never had reason to know of it, so when the GFCI finally does trip, they experience symptoms similar to what the OP is experiencing. In newer dwellings, the kitchen and bathrooms will be on their own separate 20A circuits, with bedrooms separately on AFCI breakers.

pardon my ignorance in this matter, but if you wire it in series, do you still get 120V for each duplex down the line?

Yes. It's series in the sense that the circuit will break if the GFCI is tripped or fails, but the receptacles themselves are in parallel. That's why I apologized above for misusing the terms.

I am beginning to comprehend.

 

[Paperdoc]

Originally posted by: us3rnotfound

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: us3rnotfound
Is not a GFI recept wired in Parallel? When this trips it becomes an open and doesn't affect anything down the line, right?

Not really. Most of the time it's wired in series so that it's protection is still in place for any devices connected down the line.

The problems arise when you have older construction homes sharing the same circuit between multiple rooms (kitchen/living room, bedroom/bathrooms). Most people don't realize this or they never had reason to know of it, so when the GFCI finally does trip, they experience symptoms similar to what the OP is experiencing. In newer dwellings, the kitchen and bathrooms will be on their own separate 20A circuits, with bedrooms separately on AFCI breakers.

pardon my ignorance in this matter, but if you wire it in series, do you still get 120V for each duplex down the line?

Note that the answer as posted uses quote marks around "series" and apologizes for using the word. It's not really a series circuit. Many GFCI units that mount in a wall box and give you two outlets are set up this way. You connect two wires to their input, and they provide protected two outlets to you. Do nothing else, and that's the whole story. BUT they also have an OUTPUT hot wire that you can use to provide power to other outlet boxes. The wires that leave this box to take power to others can be connected to this output wire, and then all the downstream boxes and outlets also have GFCI protection. Otherwise if you were to connect the wires leaving this box to the INPUT wires, as would normally be done with a plain outlet, you'd have no additional protected boxes downstream.