Hi,

I am having a very weird electrical problem, that I was hoping you could help me with. Sometimes, all the lights on one circuit will go out and the breaker is not tripped. Resetting the breaker does nothing. However, if I plug the iron in to an outlet, the lights magically come back on. The outlet where the iron is plugged in is a GFCI, but it is only protecting itself and has no wires going to “load”. The other mystery is that I'm pretty sure that outlet where the iron is plugged in, is not even on the same circuit as the lights, although I might be wrong about that.

I live in the Northeast and this problem has been happening on and off, since a couple of days after Christmas. I had a friend over, who happens to be an electrician, and he could not seem to find any problem. He took the outlet apart, and several switches for the lights, and they were all reading the correct voltage, and did not have any visible signs of being broken. He also checked all the breakers in the panel.

Could this be a problem where the wires enter the house? It seems to me that there may be a short somewhere, which really worries me.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Ray

Not a short... that would either trip the breaker or cause a fire.

You have a loose connection in one of the daisy chained outlets I'm willing to bet.

Sometimes your Dryer is a convient location for a first voltage test. You don't have to remove the Panel cover.
Verify the 2 circuits, and see maybe they are not on the same circuit.
I think you have a Loose neutral(check your switch and receptacle boxes, can be in a ceiling fan or light box location as well.
I would:
1) Identify the 1 or 2 circuits involved.
2) Turn off that 1 or 2 breakers
3) See where power has been lost, it should be in one of those boxes.
If this is in conduit, there may be several circuits going through the Box. Then, remove panel cover, follow the wires from the breakers that are off, note the conduit they go into, then follow the other wires in that conduit back to their breaker(s), and turn them off also, then see wher power is lost, and check those boxes.
Personally I would try at the 2 locations involved, they any boxes physically between the 2.
The neutral is the culprit.

I would agree with smoothy. It sounds like a loose connection somewhere along the light wiring path. The best way to check is to turn the breaker off for that lighting circuit and take each individual fixture apart and look for a loose wire nut or broken wire. Sometime when an electrician is wiring , they accidentally cut into the copper wire when stripping the insulation off. These can break causing this to happen. Good Lock.

Is this now a constant failure?

Are you saying that prior to Christmas there were no failures on the circuit?

What did you do when you installed your Christmas decorations? Were any of the failing circuits involved?

You may think this crazy, but did you install any timers on the circuits? (Don't laugh, I actually had a service call where someone had installed a permanent timer and forgot it was there.)

Well, it is pretty much constant, and yes, prior to Christmas, there were no failures on the circuit. I did also confirm that it is just one circuit, and not two. Interestingly enough, I did install a timer, but not on the same circuit. The really bizarre thing here is that plugging in/using the iron, causes the lights to come back on, but when the iron shuts off, so do the lights! Someone told me that it could also be a loose neutral in the panel itself. I guess I will need to shut off the power, at least to that one circuit, and do some sleuthing.

From my above post:
Personally I would try at the 2 locations involved, then any boxes physically between the 2.
The neutral is the culprit.

Stratmando, is there some easy way to figure out everything that is on that one circuit? Also could a flakey fluorescent bulb or ballast on that circuit, cause this sort of problem?