After a bad storm last night all my garage outlet went out but the breakers are all on. I checked to make sure none were tripped. The lights work in the garage but not the breakers. So how do I trace the 115v line from the outlet to the breaker or vise-versa to find where my problem is?

You will need an open circuit tracer, something simlar to:

Greenlee Products - Greenlee A Textron Company

These cost $500.00 ish.

You may be able to use a tone generator with a receiver, similar to telephone workers use:

IDEAL 62-160 Tone Generator, Ideal 62160 - on Sale at the Test Equipment Depot

But I have not had any luck using these to trace cables, only to find them at one end.

Sometimes breakers can appear to be closed, but in fact they are tripped. We have a Square D panel at the cottage that is like that - its really annoying.

Do you know which specific breaker it is? If you do, then turn it off and back on. That may fix the problem.

If you don't know which one it is, then you may have to flip all breakers in the panel off then on until you find the right one (but you'll have to reset most electric clocks when you're done).

If that doesn't work, then can you report back on whether the garage is attached to your house? If not attached, is it an overhead service?

Fred, the simplest thing to do will be to open each outlet, junction box, etc in the circuit from the panel to the device not working and check all connections.

A popular reason for losing power on part of a circuit is at receptacles, sometimes the connection is nothing more that the wire is stripped and pushed into the back of the device. Call QuikWire, Whiz Wire, etc.

Change any connections you find like this to wrap around the screw type connection.

Could this circuit be a GFI?