I have Xmas lights in the front of my home and they have been working for a couple weeks until this past Sunday. There was some rain earlier in the day. The house is only eight years old, so I assume they are GFI outlets but have no way to be certain. I only have four GFI outlets in the house----one in the garage, a dual outlet connecting two bathrooms and two in the kitchen. None of those GFI outlets were tripped, but I reset them anyway and it didn't solve the problem with the exterior outlets. I went down to the circuit panel and turned off all breakers and turned them back on. That didn't help. I got the builder layouts out from when the house was built and confirmed that there are no more GFI outlets that I'm not aware of. I took the circuit panel cover off and tested the connections on all of the breakers and they're all hot. Everything inside the house works, the only outlets that don't are the two outdoor outlets. I had an electrician come out tonight and he just re-tested everything that I already looked in to. He swore up and down he's never seen this and believes 100% that there is a hidden GFI outlet covered in drywall after the previous owner had the basement finished. How in the world do I fix the outdoor outlets? The electrician said he would have to come back and "re-fire" the outlets. I have no idea what that means or what happens the next time the outdoor outlets stop working. If the electrician is right and there is a hidden GFI outlet, how do I find it? I have a $12 voltage tester that tells me when an outlet is hot because it beeps and flashes when I wave it by the right side of a live outlet and I can't see how it can help me locate a hidden outlet because there is too much square footage to drag it around. What do I do? Any advice?

There are tools like this one: Greenlee 2008 Power Finder Open Wire Tracer 2008 Greenlee which would work.

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Originally Posted by KeepItSimpleStupid

There are tools like this one: Greenlee 2008 Power Finder Open Wire Tracer 2008 Greenlee which would work.

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I was able to go one better (and cheaper). I contacted the builder who put me on to the electrician that wired the house. I gave him my subdivision name and address and he confirmed that he did my house eight years ago when it was being built. He said he wired every house the same and that there was indeed a separate GFI outlet for the exterior outlets. He told me exactly where to find it, but unfortunately, the idiot who finished my basement drywalled over the top of it. Since I have a fairly specific location and the outlet is mounted in a metal box against the concrete wall, a metal detector might help me narrow it down even further. Regardless, I will be cutting in to the drywall tonight.