Common Electrical Questions  

This issue may be several things:

• The breaker may really be tripped, but not look like it.  Some breakers trip and the switch lever only moves very slightly.  Always check by turning the breaker all the way off and then back on to see if it resets. 
• The outlets may be connected to a GFCI that is tripped.   Sometimes we’ll find that outlets in a different room have been connected to a GFCI and the homeowner doesn’t know this.
• It could be that one outlet has failed, causing those connected to it downstream to be effectively turned off.   This often happens if your outlets have been wired using a technique called “backstabbing”.
• It could be that the breaker has failed.  Older breakers do sometimes stop working.

This issue could be caused by the reasons above, or by other issues:

• The light switch might have failed.  We see this often.
• The fixture itself might have failed.  We see this with ceiling fan lights and others that have electronic circuits.
• If it is a fluorescent light fixture, a part inside the fixture, called the ballast, can wear out over time.  It can be replaced, but we recommend replacing the fixture with an equivalent LED fixture.  It will cost just slightly more than replacing the ballast, and will be more energy efficient.

This type of outlet is a 20 amp outlet, meaning it is made for 20 amps of current.  (The usual 3 prong outlets in your home are limited to 15 amps.)   The special 20 amp outlets have that shape so that an appliance that needs 20 amps can’t be plugged into a circuit that can only provide 15.

This means that somewhere in your house, probably an attic or a crawl space, you have some wires that have been joined together but are not inside a covered electrical box.  This is a serious safety issue.  Electrical boxes are designed to ensure that the wire connections can’t be touched or pulled apart accidently.  This prevents shorting and fires, as well as shock hazards.  If you have this situation, call us and we’ll get them safely into a box.

Typically, houses with two-prong plugs do not have cabling that provides a ground wire.  So by just replacing them with a three-prong means that you can be causing a safety issue.  

There is a solution though!  Three-prong plugs were introduced, in large part, to reduce the risk of shock, a big safety issue.  The ground wire connects to the frame of your appliance.  If, for some reason, the power shorts to that area, then the current will flow down the ground wire instead of through you.  However, since this doesn’t always work, GFCI’s were invented.  GFCI stands for Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter.  This device can eliminate the danger of shocking you without a ground wire.  What a GFCI does is measure the difference between the amount of current flowing in (on the black wire) with the amount of current flowing out (on the white wire).  If that difference is zero, everything is working fine.  But if there is a difference, no matter how small, then it means that current is going somewhere it is not supposed to.  So the GFCI “trips” and shuts off the current until that “leak” is resolved.

This means that we can use GFCIs to protect two wire circuits without grounds.  We’ll install either a GFCI breaker, or a GFCI receptacle on every circuit with outlets.  Once installed, we can now change the rest of the outlets to 3-prong and they are protected.

We will put a label on the outlets that says “GFCI Protected, No Equipment Ground”.  This will remind people that while this is safe, there is not a ground wire available for equipment that needs it for other purposes.   The label is also there to remind us that standard three-prong circuit testers will not work properly because they rely on a ground wire.