Outlets Not Working

Are your outlets not working? Have you lost power to your bedrooms or maybe even your hallway out of no where? There are many reason you can loose power to your outlets in your home. Arizona Electrical Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona would like to go over a few of the reason you might have lost power? The first thing people do when they loose power to outlets is, check their breaker box. If you happen to own a volt meter. Your volt meter with come with a black and red meter probe. The black is used for the ground wire and the red is used for your hot leg. The volt meter will have a “V~”  symbol on it.  You will need to turn it to this to get your reading. You will need to place your back on the grounding bar and your red probe on the section where the wire is coming into the circuit breaker. You will need to to this test from top to bottom of the panel if your panel is not properly mark for your outlets that are not working. Once you test the breaker and your not getting the 120v reading on your breaker? Then you will need to replace the breaker. If your breaker test good.. Then its off to the next step. You need to check all your GFCI outlets through out the house. These are the outlets that have a test and a rest button on the outlet. A simple tripped GFCI outlet can be the cause of you loosing your power. These outlets can be located in your bathrooms, your garage, our even connect to your outside circuits. We have found Gfci outlets in the upstairs bathroom control power to your outside circuits. It really depends on how they wire your home. You can it the test button and the rest button. If your gfci was tripped? All you need to do is hit the rest button. If you keep hitting the reset button and nothing happens? Then you will need to replace your outlet. Lots of times, outlets not working can be caused by a bad outlet. This outlet could still be working and is causing all other outlets down stream to be with out power? How do you know? This will require a bit of investigation.. but once you get the outlet removed, you will need to connect the two hot legs together. Then you can test the other outlets down stream that where not working before. You may need to repeat this a few times before you find the first outlet in that circuit. Sometimes that outlet can be in the hallway or in the next bedroom that is causing your issue. Outlets not working still? You might have a short in your line. You can loose a hot an neutral leg for any number of reasons. Most of the time it is cause by screwing pictures up on the wall and hitting a live wire. Other times it can be cause by a staple that was hit a little to hard during installation. Overtime, this pinched wire that vibrates can eventually giveaway causing a short to happen. Unless you have special equipment? Finding the short will be very difficult to do. If you do happen to find it? The do make special UL listed splice kits that allow you to splice the wire directly into the wall with out the need of putting the wires in a box as require by NEC code. Splices need to be excessible at all times. If your still having issues? Please give Arizona Electrical Solutions in Phoenix Arizona a Call! We have the experience and the tools to find out why your outlets are not working.