home electrical help....
 

Hopefully I can explain this correctly and someone may have an answer....

I live in a 2 story house... have seperate heat/air units for upstairs and down. Recently the overhead lights and wall recepts quit working in the kitchen (on one wall only), utlity room, and garage... upstairs heat and hot water tank works, downstairs hot water tank works, but heating unit (downstairs) is in same closet and it doesn't. The kitchen, utility room, and garage are all in line on the back side of the downstairs part of the house. I am not an electrician by any stretch of the imagination, but I have checked the fuse panel and found none of the breakers tripped. Could I have a blown fuse? If so, how do I pull them from the fuse box, or even better how do I test them before pulling to see if one is blown? Any serious help would be appreciated.... it is getting verrrrry cold downstairs!!!!

your Christmas presents blocking the vents
sorry about the big screen

You have fuses and breakers?

EDIT: Wait. I had a fuse dedicated to my furnace go bad once (even though the house itself was governed by breakers), so you might have that problem. Look for a small fuse box in the furnace room.

And under no circumstances should you try to put a penny into that fuse box with a set of needle-nose pliers. You'll end up with half a penny, a ruined pair of pliers and temporary blindness.

How old is your house or how modern is the electrical system?

:popcorn:

Dinny

Check your breakers again. Sometimes they don't look like they've kicked, but they have.

E=IR

Also, if you have a GFCI outlet somewhere, it will shut off an entire circuit if it's been tripped.

I thought the same thing, so I flipped every one of them and still did not find one that had tripped.

The original house was built sometime after the turn of the century, I believe the upstairs was an add on, but couldn't swear to that. I do know the owner at one point had remodeled the entire home so I am not real sure how old the electrical sysem is.

Everything downstream from the outlet, unless you have gfci breaker on the entire circuit.

Code is for gfci in kitchens now.

Also to reiterate as posted above, lightly tap the breakers to make sure it is not tripped.

Be careful 120 probably won't kill you, but 240 will.

What is that and how do I check to see if I have one?

ROFLROFLROFL

That's hilarious... is that the voice of experience?

It looks pretty much just like a regular electrical outlet. They will be situated in places where they might get wet, such as bathrooms, kitchens, etc. They will have either a pop-out indicator on them, or in the newer ones, a red LED light that indicates they've kicked.

Look for an outlet with two buttons on its face. One is usually red and one is white.

Well, uh, yeah. In fact it is.