[rodzillaj3]

I came home from Christmas vacation and saw my Christmas lights were not lit when they were supposed to be since they were on a timer. I saw that the outlets were the issue since the lights worked on different outlets in the house. Also, the breaker that controls the outdoor outlets also runs the outlets in the bathrooms of the house (which I thought was weird). My first instinct after some research was that the breaker went bad. I bought a new breaker and installed it, same result, no power to outlets. I then swapped the breaker with another break already in the box and placed the suspected bad one in a different position in the box of the same type. The same outlets still had no power even with the same breaker type so I know the breaker is not the issue. What else could this be?

[hkstroud]

Press the reset button on the outlet in the bathroom.

[rodzillaj3]

There are five outlets total, 3 in the bathroom and 2 outside and none of them have reset buttons. Should have mentioned that as well.

[hkstroud]

Either there is a reset button on the breaker or there is another outlet on that circuit that has a reset button. Could be in another bath, garage or outside. Do outlets in that bath work?

[rodzillaj3]

hkstroud,

Thank you so much. There was an outlet behind a bunch of boxes in my garage that needed reset. The outlets work now. My next question would be, is there anything you recommend that I could replace or alter that would ensure this doesn't happen again next Christmas when I put up lights? Again, thank you for your time fixing this matter.

[hkstroud]

The GFI outlet (the outlet behind the boxes) is wired to protect itself and all of the outlets down stream. Usually that outlet would be in the bath. Unusual to have circuit go to garage first and then to bath. Current code allows a bath circuit to serve only that bath or another bath.

That outlet could be rewired to protect itself only and pass unprotected service to the next outlet.

The next outlet may be the bath or it may be the exterior. The next outlet would have to be GFI. The new GFI would protect itself and every thing down stream or it could protect itself only, with the next subsequent outlet being GFI. Rewiring this way is simple and it puts the reset button where you see it (and know it has tripped). Only draw back is cost of GFI outlets, Currently about $15 to $18.

The GFI most likely tripped because of moisture in Christmas lights.

[hfcarson]

The code requires that all the bathroom outlets and all outdoor outlets (and others... )
Are GFCI protected. It was common for the original electricians to locate the GFCI receptacle in the garage and then connect all the restroom and exterior receptacles to the load side of the garage GFCI. In this way all the receptacles were protected by the garage receptacle.

You can rewire this circuit to take all the receptacles off the load side of the garage GFCI but you must then change all the bathroom and exterior receptacles to the GFCI type...
At least when one of these GFCI's trips fewer devices will lose power...

[rodzillaj3]

Thanks again, I will keep that in mind.

[hkstroud]

It was common for the original electricians

Cheap, money grubbing electricians. They save $2 on installation and the customer pays $200 for them to come back and tell them where the reset button is. You would think that they were computer programmers.

(My attempt at internet humor, I would put a Grining smiley face here but they seem to have taken that feature away).

[rodzillaj3]

Ha, funny how you say that... I'm a computer programmer, lol.

[hkstroud]

Well I hope you put out an error code "Dummy you can't put numbers in a Name field." Not "error code "000000312"


Old main frame programmer.

[rodzillaj3]

I've always been taught to dumb it down. It is unprofessional to not be user friendly. No one should have to look at error codes without being able to decipher it in the same message.

[hkstroud]

Good man.