Electrical – Outlets/Lights out – Breaker on

electrical

I’m looking for a little help. I’m fairly handy but have run into some strange electrical issues. My wife blew one kitchen outlet last week when plugging in air fryer. I checked and no breakers were tripped. We have what seems to be 3 outlets and 2 kitchen lights on the circuit; all not working. All Gfci’s in house(kitchen, garage, bathrooms and outside) are good. I went ahead and reset all of them just to be clear. I have flipped the main panel off and flipped each individual breaker on/off 3 or 4 times now. All breakers are showing 120 plus volts from my multi-meter but no power is showing at the outlets or lights. I actually changed out 2 breakers that had a little corrosion around the wires but that didn’t help at all. There is no obvious damage to the outlets or lights or any loose wires. I’ve actually gone room to room and checked each and every outlet and they are all wired correctly. I am at a loss of where to go from here. We never had issue with this outlet/a prior or the lights on the same circuit. Please HELP!

Best Answer

There may be no damage to the outlets but there will be damage at a common location possibly even prior to the lighting circuit tap.

What is usually the problem with a large load added to other devices is there is a failure most commonly at a back stab (the push in connectors on receptacles and switches) the next most common place is a loose wire nut with a loose wire. A broken wire at one of the locations and least often a problem in the service panel.

Work backwards towards the service panel the problem is at the last working device (switch or receptacle) or the first non working device. The failure will be on the hot since the breaker shows good but no power at the receptacles.

Kitchen countertop circuits are normally 20 amp and the lighting is not normally them. And backstabs are not for 20 amp circuits so it is probably a bad splice or broken wire, checking at the light switch connections and working to the service panel for the bad connection is the task. Most probably the hot.