When I opened my garage this morning the door went half up and then stopped. I checked the lights and nothing worked. I then unplugged any device that was plugged into the outlet and still nothing. I reset the breaker and used a test light. The test light shows the ground and hot reversed. When I plug anything else into the outlet, nothing will work. Currently none of my outlets have anything in them and all light switches are off. Any ideas? Thanks.

If your ground and hot are reversed your breaker won't even reset, it's a dead short. Test again with everything unplugged from the circuit. The door issue may or may not even be related. Many things will stop a door but usually don't disable it. Do you have a sensor that detects movement through the open doorway, are your springs still both intact and not broken? Lets get the electricity going first and then we can tackle the door in addition posts/responses. By the way, your tester, is it the kind that has three prongs and plugs into an outlet and then shows several arrangements of red,yellow,green lights?

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Originally Posted by ballengerb1

If your ground and hot are reversed your breaker won't even reset, its a dead short. Test again with everything unplugged from the circuit. The door issue may or may not even be related. Many things will stop a door but usually don't disable it. Do you have a sensor that detects movement through the open doorway, are your springs still both intact and not broken? Lets get the electricity going first and then we can tackle the door in addition posts/responses. By the way, your tester, is it the kind that has three prongs and plugs into an outlet and then shows several arrangements of red,yellow,green lights?

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The breaker never tripped, and I can reset it. Yes, the tester is the three prong with the 3 lights. Like you said, I am concentrating on getting the power resolved first before I worry about the garage door. The timing just seems odd. I have tested without anything plugged in and it still reads "hot / grd reverse". The only other thing on the circuit is the external lights. But those switches are off anyway.

Is there much else near it on an adjacent circuit? A popular shortcut is to run a hot wire off each leg and one neutral. 3 wires do the work of 4 with the neutral carrying the difference in loads between the circuit. If you have a bad connection in one wire, strange things can happen. Try turning the 2 breakers off above and below the one for the problem circuit. Then test the outlet.

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Originally Posted by labman

Is there much else near it on an adjacent circuit? A popular shortcut is to run a hot wire off each leg and one neutral. 3 wires do the work of 4 with the neutral carrying the difference in loads between the circuit. If you have a bad connection in one wire, strange things can happen. Try turning the 2 breakers off above and below the one for the problem circuit. Then test the outlet.

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No luck. I turned off the 2 breakers above and below the problem breaker. Still not power. I even removed a motion light from the garage that I thought may have been causing the problem.

Turning off the other breakers wouldn't restore the power, just help localize the problem by eliminating the hot/ground reversed reading.

There is a loose or broken connection in the neutral wire of this circuit that is not working, can be anywhere between the panel or at any outlet or junction box the last outlet not working. Each box needs to be opened looking for a loose, broken or burnt connection or splice.

I'd follow tkrussels direction starting at the outlet where the opener was plugged. That outlet or one very near it was probably being vibrated by the opener when the wiring failed.

The problem was found in a junction box under my porch. It looks like one of the wires that should have been twisted together were not making contact. So, we twisted the wires and put the cap back on them. All is working. Thanks everyone for there answers.