Electrical – Partial power outage upstairs

electricalgfci

Lost power to a few rooms upstairs on Sunday (ran a space heater and hair dryer at some time). I thought we tripped a breaker but nothing was flipped in the electric panel. I reset every breaker to be sure. Then I checked we were getting power to each one with a fuse tester and that looks good. I reset all the GFCIs and found one that wouldn't reset out by the garage. So I replaced it and it reset but it didn't solve the problem.

Best Answer

It just means that a wire termination (where a wire meets a receptacle, wire nut or switch) failed somewhere from the overload. It failed in an arc-fault mode, meaning it burned out like a fuse then arced across the gap, until the arc self-extinguished. If it had not, you'd be seeing your insurance man in the morning.

The connection didn't short against another wire, so it didn't make a short circuit. That's why it didn't trip the breaker. Breakers are not "Magic Master Detect-All's". They make those; they're called dual-mode AFCI/GFCI breakers. The AFCI would have tripped from the arcing, stopping the arc in case it did not self-extinguish.

So now you need to go hunt down the bad connection, starting at the panel. Electrical circuits are wired like a tree, they can have any number of branches, but they never loop back to themselves. Most are wired linear like a vine. The problem is either at the last functioning outlet or the first bad outlet. The top candidates are:

  • Backstab connections
  • Aluminum wire on old non-aluminum-rated terminations (basically all terminations out there on Al wire)
  • Loose amateur-done wirenuts - wirenuts are one of the few times "gorilla tight" is appropriate
  • Screws not tightened enough