Dear Doctor Livejournal (Electrical Dept.)
Jan. 4th, 2011 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eubOne electrical box in the kitchen stopped working, both outlets of it. It definitely worked until the day or two before.
My little outlet tester says hot/ground reversed. I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure I tested every three-prong outlet in the house (to find the ones that aren't actually grounded), and there was sure no hot/ground reversal. Which sounds like a weird condition to have, ever, plus extra-weird to spontaneously develop. I o_Oed and breakered that circuit off.
Now I ask Dear Doctor Internet (Electrical Dept.) and it sounds like that reading probably means "open neutral" and a load somewhere else on the circuit. The "backstabbed outlets" that the Doctor mentions seem to be described here.
I ♥ Doctor Internet (all her Departments), but I like a second opinion from Doctor Livejournal on electrical work. Also... if I find these are backstab, I'll probably change them all over to screwed, but I'm curious if there's also a way to debug which one went bad before opening them all -- it should be either the last *working* one in the circuit chain (if the fault's in the "outbound" neutral), or the first non-working one (if fault's in the "inbound" neutral), I believe?
My little outlet tester says hot/ground reversed. I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure I tested every three-prong outlet in the house (to find the ones that aren't actually grounded), and there was sure no hot/ground reversal. Which sounds like a weird condition to have, ever, plus extra-weird to spontaneously develop. I o_Oed and breakered that circuit off.
Now I ask Dear Doctor Internet (Electrical Dept.) and it sounds like that reading probably means "open neutral" and a load somewhere else on the circuit. The "backstabbed outlets" that the Doctor mentions seem to be described here.
I ♥ Doctor Internet (all her Departments), but I like a second opinion from Doctor Livejournal on electrical work. Also... if I find these are backstab, I'll probably change them all over to screwed, but I'm curious if there's also a way to debug which one went bad before opening them all -- it should be either the last *working* one in the circuit chain (if the fault's in the "outbound" neutral), or the first non-working one (if fault's in the "inbound" neutral), I believe?
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Date: 2011-01-08 05:12 pm (UTC)Personally, I'd take a close look at BOTH the last working box and the first non-working one. We live in a house with stunningly bizarre wiring, and I've seen a few cases where they did two things wrong that canceled each other out. I'd fix one problem and things would get worse until I found and fixed the other. I've learned to go over every inch of the wiring between known good and known bad, even when there "couldn't possibly" be a problem in between.
As for the "connect ground to neutral to make 3-prong plugs work", we have some of that, too. I've been disconnecting the fake grounds. When I need a 3-prong outlet on a non-grounded circuit, I throw together a short, brightly colored "WTF is this?" adapter cord. That way, nobody will make false assumptions about the circuit that's in the wall.