Check out some similar questions!

emilyatl · Jan 28, 2010, 08:19 AM

Hi all, I woke up this morning to no power to a portion of my house. The circuit that seems to have the problem is the garage/small half-bath, but the circuit breaker does not appear to be tripped. Those are the only two rooms in the house that have no power. I did turn it off and back on again to see if that helped, but it didn't. I have 1 GFI outlet in each of those rooms and I tried resetting each of them, but I still have no power. Everything was fine last night and nothing new was plugged into either of those rooms. Any ideas on what I should check now?

donf · Jan 28, 2010, 09:23 AM

If you did not push the breaker handle all the way to the off position it will not reset the breaker when turn the breaker back on.

Some panels that I have worked on required that the access cover to the panel be removed in order to get the full range of motion for the handle.

If you have no experience working on the panel, then please call a licensed electrician. Main Service Panels can be deadly!

That said, since you have the panel open, set the multimeter to 200 + VAC.

Clip the black probe from the meter to either the Neutral or Ground bus. Place the red probe from the meter unto the connection screw for the black conductor. With the breaker in the closed or "On" position, you should see 120 +/- VAC on the meter scale. If it is zero, then either the breaker need to be reset or the breaker is bad.

If you have tried resetting the breaker, then it will be necessary to remove the breaker, verify that the phase bus bar. I would expect that between the phase bus bar and the neutral or ground you would see 120 VAC. If you see zero VAC, then you have a Main Service Panel problem which is possible, but unlikely.

If the entire phase bar were out every Branch Circuit that is drawing from that circuit woul be out also.

riverrat48 · Apr 17, 2011, 07:15 AM

Thank you donf. You gave me the clue. Several circuits stopped working in my home. I know my wiring because I did a lot of it myself, so I know which breaker goes to which circuit, but I hadn't noticed that it was every other circuit that wasn't working. Could it be the phase bus bar? It tested bad on one side, but I could see no reason why it doesn't work. Next I followed the main line to the weather head, then to the utility pole at the road. There is a dead squirrel hanging on one of the lines. Thank you, donf. Now I'll talk with my neighbor who is an electrician.

riverrat48 · Apr 17, 2011, 10:37 AM

Update. The electric company came and checked their cables from the road to the meter. There is no problem there, and the service panel is OK. That means that one of the cables running underground between the meter and the service panel is damaged somewhere along the line. The problem is in the only part of the line that I could not easily check. My meter is on a utility pole about 20 feet from the house, and the cable runs across then under the foundation. It was installed in 1984, and not in conduit.
As typical around here, something starts looking like a simple task, but it never is. So, I'm off to dig a trench.. . Then get new cable and conduit, then take the siding off that part of the house, which is easier than taking out the drywall on the inside. Fixing the old cable is not an option.
Thank you again donf.
I realize that this is an old question, but some day someone may come along, like I did, and I hope this helps.

donf · Apr 17, 2011, 10:43 AM

Greetings,

Nice to hear back from you.
Since you have to re-dig the trench, might I suggest that you install conduit to run the cable in.

If you do that, should another cable problem occur, you can replace the cable without having to re-dig the trench, yet again.