Any residential electricians in the house?

I guess in order to balance the karma of me buying a new bike, our furnace took a vacation overnight. Fortunately our trusted HVAC guy managed to drop by within a few hours and resurrect it.

We did plug in a couple of space heaters to keep us from freezing and unfortunately plugged them into the same circuit - thanks to the somewhat eccentric electrical installation in this house, it wasn't obvious and I haven't fully mapped which outlet hangs off which breaker. This should have tripped the breaker but didn't. The circuit is dead as a dodo. Right now I have turned off the circuit at (hopefully) the correct breaker, but this has me wondering what went pop.

I've got an electrician coming next week to take a look - a recommendation from an ex-colleagues husband who's also an electrician, just not licensed in NV. They're supposed to be very good and thus in demand. I have some questions before I talk to them.

1. Is it normal to have all outlets in two rooms and the lights in those rooms on the same 15A breaker, at least in an early 90s house?
2. All breakers should be either in the main panel or the sub panel, correct? And the panels are at least supposed to be in the same location/next to each other?

I'm generally fairly confident with wiring but especially in this case I do want professional help and I'm trying to make sure I'm asking the right questions.

I'm not an electrician. But I did take electricity in Jr. High School.

They usually put one room on a circuit. Two rooms, lights and outlets, on one 15 amp breaker is pretty unusual, in my experience. All breakers should be in the main panel or a sub panel, but a sub panel in a residential house to run some rooms would be pretty weird. Anyway, if there's a breaker in the circuit, it's gotta be in a panel somewhere.

Is there power on the output of all the breakers? A breaker can go bad.

Also, it almost sounds like someone added on a room and just tapped into the outlet on the next room over to run it.

I'm not an electrician but I feel like I've seen breakers trip that didn't really look the part, you reset them by going all the way to the off position (which took considerably more force than normal) and then they flipped back on normally, sometimes it took an extra try to get it to reset.

I'm not an electrician either, buy I do have electricity in my house.

Once I lost the lights in my hallway and power to half the outlets in two bedrooms. No breakers were tripped and I couldn't figure it out. It turns out, there was an unused GFI outlet hiding behind a dresser. Somehow, that got tripped and all it took to fix it was to press the reset button.

So...maybe look for a GFI?

A lot of breakers are designed to trip a total of 2 times in their life. They will often go on for years of repeated abuse, but they are technically only guaranteed for two goes. It's very possible that it has shat the bed in the open position, which is much preferred to the closed position.

90's would also put you into early GFCIs. You might check the bathroom(s), and see if somebody scabbed these rooms to the load side of a GFCI.

I have done a fair amount of electrical work, including service work. It could be anything. The weirdest I've seen was a nail driven through a wire. When it shorted, it left a really odd burn mark in the middle of the wall and never did trip the breaker. The call was for a dead receptacle. We found the burn mark when we moved a piece of furniture.

As far as what circuits control what, spec houses are whatever is cheapest. My house has a receptacle and lights on the back of the house, controlled by a GFIC receptacle in the garage.

The above suggestions are worth a check. If you don't like electricity and don't want to chance getting shocked, let the pros do it. If you don't mind working through the problem, it's not that hard to do yourself. I would bet on a failed breaker. Pulling the panel cover and testing the output on all of them with them turned on, should identify it pretty quick. Changing them isn't hard, and with the main turned off, it can be done fairly safely.

Dr. Hess wrote: Also, it almost sounds like someone added on a room and just tapped into the outlet on the next room over to run it.

Not sure about that, but possible. The previous owners did build an extension to the house, but that is on a different circuit. I do suspect that some of the wiring oddities are because of that, though.

Some of the wiring mess is definitely because of the extension and because they ran additional outlets to the garage as well.

Woody wrote: I'm not an electrician either, buy I do have electricity in my house. Once I lost the lights in my hallway and power to half the outlets in two bedrooms. No breakers were tripped and I couldn't figure it out. It turns out, there was an unused GFI outlet hiding behind a dresser. Somehow, that got tripped and all it took to fix it was to press the reset button. So...maybe look for a GFI?

There's one GFI I know of (in the garage controlling the sockets in the bathrooms at the other end of the house ) and I checked that just to make sure. The dead outlets and lights are on a different circuit. Of course that doesn't mean that there isn't another GFI behind the "built in" cabinets in the garage.

Toyman01 wrote: As far as what circuits control what, spec houses are whatever is cheapest. My house has a receptacle and lights on the back of the house, controlled by a GFIC receptacle in the garage.

That's mostly what I suspect. I've seen some of the work on this place already, so I'm getting pretty hard to surprise by now.

Toyman01 wrote: The above suggestions are worth a check. If you don't like electricity and don't want to chance getting shocked, let the pros do it. If you don't mind working through the problem, it's not that hard to do yourself. I would bet on a failed breaker. Pulling the panel cover and testing the output on all of them with them turned on, should identify it pretty quick. Changing them isn't hard, and with the main turned off, it can be done fairly safely.

I don't mind doing some electrical work, done a reasonable amount of it already. That said, every country does things differently and I'm still learning how things are done over here.

That said, from some of the crap I've seen so far I would want a pro's opinion on some of the work that's been done to this house.

I might check the breaker myself, that's well within my abilities.

My first thought is you have a gfci somewhere in the wood pile.

In reply to BoxheadTim:

People often look for a certain amount of logic in residential circuitry. There has never been any code requirement that mandated logic!

Circuits are not measured by number of bedrooms. They are measured by amperage draw. Rule of thumb- 1.5 amps per outlet or light fixture, don't load a breaker more than 80%. That means a 15A breaker can handle 12 amps, or 8 lights or outlets. There is no law that says these devices must be near each other.

Theoretically, a small bedroom may have only 2 or 3 outlets. So, the answer to you question is, no it's not typical, but it could be legal.

Sub-panels are almost never located near the main panel.

It was a bad breaker. Whacking it back and forth with more gusto restored service for now, but I'll still have the electrician come and check things over, plus to give me a quote for some of the work that needs to be done (like putting the two bedrooms on their own circuits for starters).

SVreX wrote: In reply to BoxheadTim: People often look for a certain amount of logic in residential circuitry. There has never been any code requirement that mandated logic!

Thanks for chiming in, I had hoped you would see the post.

Obviously I was being way to logical about this .

SVreX wrote: Circuits are not measured by number of bedrooms. They are measured by amperage draw. Rule of thumb- 1.5 amps per outlet or light fixture, don't load a breaker more than 80%. That means a 15A breaker can handle 12 amps, or 8 lights or outlets. There is no law that says these devices must be near each other.

That would suggest there are too many loads on this particular circuit - without testing all of them it looks like there is a total of 12 loads (lights and outlets combined). Fortunately most of them are not in use, but that would still suggest that splitting this into two circuits would be a really good idea.

SVreX wrote: Theoretically, a small bedroom may have only 2 or 3 outlets. So, the answer to you question is, no it's not typical, but it could be legal.

Given that this is the original part of the house I suspect it was at least legal back in '92. None of these look altered.

SVreX wrote: Sub-panels are almost never located near the main panel.

Interesting. Ours is right next to the main panel, but I think they just dropped it in there because the main panel was full.

We spent one very long Saturday with a pair of walkie talkies and a clipboard, flipping switches and breakers and taking lots and lots of notes. Then we typed it all up nice and neat, laminated it and hung it on the wall next to the panel. Not a fun day, but totally worth the effort.

In reply to Woody:

I've done about 80% of that. Given that I want 240V in the garage, I'll probably get that done at the same time.

Woody wrote: We spent one very long Saturday with a pair of walkie talkies and a clipboard, flipping switches and breakers and taking lots and lots of notes. Then we typed it all up nice and neat, laminated it and hung it on the wall next to the panel. Not a fun day, but totally worth the effort.

You can get one of these non-contact voltage testers for around $30:

However, my step son (licensed electrician) told me they’re called idiot pens in the trade due to their high rate of committing Type II error (misclassifying hot lines as cold)

Oh well, as I like to say…if it works, it’s a Fluke

I am an electrician and as was mentioned you typically have 8-10 devices (lights or outlets) and normally try to spread them out through a number of rooms. The reason for this is so if a circuit trips you don't take out an entire room, just a portion of it. The kitchen and bathrooms are the exception to this rule due to higher amperage loads. Most things that are plugged into outlets are not on, many times only one or two things are really on at the same time on any given circuit. Where you had two high amperage loads on the same circuit the breaker did exactly what it was supposed to do. It shut the circuit off before any damage could be done to the wiring or the outlets. To reset a breaker it has to be turned all the way off before it can be turned back on. It should click when it gets to the full off position. Have the electrician check everything out and you may need to have the breaker replaced, but only if it seems like the handle is not opening and closing the contacts properly. Breakers can trip numerous times without needing to be replaced. Having the sub panel next to the main is not unusual either.

Anytime I have to turn off a switch or outlet I write the breaker number on the plug where it will be hidden by the cover plate (like in the middle by the screw hole). That way next time, I'm not hunting breakers.

imgon wrote: Having the sub panel next to the main is not unusual either.

You're right. I worded that very badly.

Let me try again:

BoxheadTim wrote: ...And the panels are at least supposed to be in the same location/next to each other?

Sub panels can be located next to the main panel, or in any other location remote to the main panel. There is no need for them to be near the main. They are often located according to the ease of application- if they are just expansion space, they would be near the main, but if they serve a remote purpose (like an outbuilding, swimming pool, attic space, etc), they are often located closer to the area they are serving.

We have 6 breaker boxes for our 2200 sq-ft home & outbuildings. 4 are daisy-chained, 2 aren't(one of those is outside)...actually 7-boxes if I count the A/C shutoff. There are light switches I've still not determined whether they actually do anything.

I knew I was in trouble when at closing last year the sellers told us "Good luck figuring out the electric.", though they at least left their phone number & email for us.

I'd replace that breaker immediately without waiting for electrician to come, would not trust it to trip in event that it needs to ie your wife tries to weld a cat toy to a receptacle

In reply to petegossett:

Lovely. Our house is huge so it at least makes some sense to have a bunch of panels. It's about 6400sf plus the attached garage and we have six panels. I thought there were "only" five but I closed a door I hadn't closed before and found an 18 space pushmatic panel behind it. The house has 400 amp service (twin 200 amp) which I'd never seen in a house before.

Similar situation in my house. The house is wired fine but someone was going to add somthing on the bacement and there is a new sub pannel there that controls some of the kitchen updates and some exterior sockets that were added by the second owner. Then there was the pool, the barn and the other shed. When I got the place I looked in the barn and found a panel that was a mess. No brakers with things hot wired no face plate and wires comming out from the face. I was like no way tho could be live. It was and all the wires were just cut out at barious places where the pool use to be. I back traces the entire mess to two 15 amp brakes on the main panel that were labled kitchen. I pulled tge brakers and put block off panes in the box and spent a weekend pulling up the interior rated wires that were burried all over the back yard. The other shef was not as bad but still used interior rated 14/2 hurried in the ground to get power to it. I ripped that out as well. Some people should not be allowed to do electricity and wiring.

In reply to dculberson:

We have the main/original 10-slot box inside a kitchen cabinet, rendering the bottom shelf essentially useless. It then feeds a larger subpanel in the rear addition from the mid-90's, which then runs 220v out to the garage subpanel, from there 220v out to the workshop subpanel, and lastly 110v out to the gazebo.

Going the opposite direction from the main panel, it runs to a subpanel in the front master addition...but wait, there's more!. Inside the meter box outside are two 220v breakers that run the tankless water heater in the master bath. Then there's the small box outside above the a/c unit.

Someday I'll rip it all out and start over...