Huh

[telophase]

We've got 2 outlets on the outside of the house--one front, one back--that quit working some time back. We had the electrician over today for other reasons and finally remembered to mention the outlets.

Turns out that they're tripped by a GFCI outlet SOMEWHERE in the house. We have no idea where. The electrician searched with myrialux for a while--they thoroughly searched the garage because that would be something tied to the front and back outside of the house--but left without finding it.

Anyone have a similar problem? If so, where did you find the hidden outlet? (It's not the laundry room.)

Comments

[yhlee]

Nearby closets? I've sometimes seen outlets stashed in closets, especially larger ones. But that may just be me.

That sounds like a pain; sympathies.

[telophase]

We'll add that to the list of places to search, thanks.

Our luck, it'll be one of the outlets behind a fully-laden bookcase...

[yhlee]

Oh man, fingers crossed that it's somewhere easily accessible...!

[movingfinger]

Ah, house mysteries! We discovered that an outdoor outlet had been daisy-chained to a bathroom GFCI nowhere near it! It must have been a nuisance to wire it that way, too! The bathroom outlet wasn't used much so no one had noticed it had tripped.

Do you have a crawl space? If there's a light in it, possibly that's where the GFCI is?

Although it's legal to daisy-chain them (APPARENTLY), I vastly prefer having each one have its own reset button right on there.

[telophase]

No crawl space. There's an outlet in the eaves, but myrialux pointed it out to the electrician and it's not GFCI.

We discovered a year or so back that one of the kitchen outlets kills half of the kitchen when it trips, thanks to a faulty breadmaker we bought.

And in house mysteries, the original owners, who had the house built by the development company, put TV outlets on the back porch and in the garage, but not in the master bedroom. And there's TV outlet in a niche in the living room that's in the most inconvenient spot to put a TV (i.e. it's right in the middle of traffic flow), and nowhere else. So the dud ended up stringing his own cable across the attic to put it into the master bedroom, and also strung INSIDE RATED CABLE down the OUTSIDE of the house to the spot it should have been installed in the living room in the first place.

Not as bad as my doctor's house, though. She told me that she'd budgeted to completely rewire the house when she bought it, and when the electrician was over, he started swearing gently, then called her over because he couldn't believe what he was seeing. And she confirmed that yes, the previous owner had wired the house's electricity with speaker wire.

[yhlee]

the previous owner had wired the house's electricity with speaker wire

OMG!!!

[movingfinger]

(hushed voice) oh, my god...speaker wire...

[affreca]

Speaker wire. The worst electrical discovery when buying the house was the power company finding out that the previous owner had wired the AC to the power before for the meter. Thankfully it was found just as we bought the house, and the previous owner was dead, so there was no one for the power company to go after.

[ellenmillion]

Look in potentially wet places first - bathrooms, basements, kitchens; that's where CFCI outlets are usually installed. Actually, I'd look for a third outside outlet first. Does your fuse box have notes about what fuse those outlets are on? You can narrow it down to something else on that fuse and at least use that as a clue to help your search.

I sometimes pity someone trying to figure out our electrical system... we built and wired our own house and while it is 100% to code (and frequently overkill), it is... a little creative in places. It's decently documented in the fuse box... if you understand our shorthand.