Before I call an electrician...

August 8, 2020 9:41 AM

Over multiple years (4+?), the outlets in our kitchen are dying. I have enough knowledge to swap out outlets and have done more extensive electrical work in theatre to begin to troubleshoot, but now things went weird....

L to R, we have:

1. a pair of dual non-gfci outlets, which I think are piggy-backed on:

2. one dual gfci outlet

3. a dual non-gfci outlet under sink for garbage disposal (thanks shitty subcontractors!)

4. a dual gfci near microwave, gas oven, etc.

*****

1 burnt out years ago. Didn't bother to fix it, as we had more outlets than needed. Ditto with 4.

2 finally went out this week so we assumed we needed to change out the outlets, due to a delightful (/snark) roach infestation, which is being managed.

So.....

flipped the breaker and swapped out some of the outlets and....

no outlets work.

We had temp put oven and micro on 3, and after cutting power to kitchen, they don't power on. dishwasher doesn't either. disposal is same.

outlets 2 and 4 after changing are getting enough load to power LED on the gfci outlets.

All the overhead lights in kitchen seem to be on same circuit and working perfectly.

Ultimately, my question is how can I fix the load issue w/o spending major money. The outlets are clearly getting power, but just won't power anything.

thanks, hive mind. please excuse typos, etc. typing with a busted finger.

posted by a non mouse, a cow herd to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

Best answer: This may not be the answer to your problem, but:

Many maddening issues are caused by loose or open grounds or neutrals. They are often daisy-chained which means there are many opportunities for whole sections of the circuit to not work.
posted by H21 at 9:53 AM on August 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Following on the above - buy this or something like it. It'll tell you exactly what is wrong (out of the normal case stuff), and then you can fix it. My guess from the "they can power the LED" is probably an open neutral. If they all show as normal then it's call an electrician time.
posted by true at 10:08 AM on August 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Best answer: One of the GFCI's in the branch have line and load swapped is my guess.
posted by iamabot at 10:16 AM on August 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

I was just coming in to say the same thing as iamabot. I had a similar issue two years ago and spent a maddening afternoon trying to figure out what was wrong before realizing that the GFCI that I had replaced had an opposite orientation from the new one.
posted by saladin at 10:22 AM on August 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Are you sure the GFCI outlets aren't actually tripped themselves? Did you press the reset button on them? In my experience the little LED on those doesn't light up unless they have been tripped and need to be reset.

Otherwise yes, I'd imagine there is a pair of swapped wires or some other improper outlet wiring.
posted by SquidLips at 10:23 AM on August 8, 2020

Response by poster: First off, all y'all are awesome. Even after all these years, it amazes me how quick good advice comes through.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 11:42 AM on August 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

WHAT WAS IT SOLVE THE RIDDLE WE MUST KNOW
posted by wenestvedt at 1:02 PM on August 8, 2020 [12 favorites]

Response by poster: @wenevestvedt It appears to be a branch issue. All but one outlet are working now. This is more than have been working in years!

Many thanks to true for suggesting a multimeter. As expected, pretty much everything is showing as open ground.

It's nice to be able to cook again, and nice to be able to plan out fixing the underlying issue.

All y'all rock!
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:10 PM on August 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

(Whew, thank goodness you're alive!)
posted by wenestvedt at 12:46 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]