We just moved into this house about 8 months ago. It was remodeled before we moved in, and a some outlets were added. Fast forward to now, some of those outlets added and possibly a few existing ones have stopped working. Unfortunately this affected outlets in both the kitchen and the garage, which prevented our two refrigerators from working in addition to lots of other trouble that isn't important right now.
I'll try to make this as simple as possible:
- The breaker panel appears to be a Pushmatic panel. There are no labels of any sort on it.
- It appears to be split bus.
- I've pushed them all off and on firmly. From the outside they all seem fine.
- I am not sure which breaker is for the circuit that is not working. On the lower bus, there are four 20A breakers and three 15A breakers, and I know I can rule out two of those 15A breakers.
- In the past I have heard a faint buzz occasionally come from the panel's direction for a few seconds, but I am unsure if it was the panel making the sound.
- The Outlets
- There are two GFCI outlets in the house. The one in the kitchen appears to be fine. The one in the bathroom is not working, but when I checked it there was no voltage on the hot wire, so the outlet is probably fine. There are also no load wires connected.
- I think there are a total of six outlets not working. The one in the bathroom, two in the kitchen, three in the garage. The other two outlets in the kitchen are working along with an outlet in the garage.
- I have unplugged everything from all the affected outlets, then reset all the breakers. No change.
- I know at least two of these outlets were installed before we moved in, possibly more.
- I ran an extension cord from a good outlet to a bad one. Testing with a multimeter, there was 120v with extension cord hot -> outlet neutral, but nothing on outlet hot -> extension cord neutral.
What could the issue be? Right now I'm feeling it's either the circuit breaker or the wiring, and I feel like it's probably the breaker. I could take the cover off the panel and carefully test the breaker, although some of you may caution against that since I'm not a licensed electrician, but it seems like the easiest thing to rule out right now.
Best Answer
Myself, I would probably check the breakers too see if they have output voltage. Be careful. I suspect a bad connection. Check the connections at the GFCI breakers. I have seen poor connections when the push in connectors have been used (I always use the screws). I recommend a non-contact voltage tester. Some like the Klein one from Home Depot are sensitive enough so that it can be used to find a dead wire in a box if you if separate them a little.