tripped circuit

We went a little overboard with our Halloween lighting, and now the outdoor outlet doesn't work. Nor does the outlet in the garage. I checked for a tripped circuit breaker, but none of them are tripped. So I figure it must be a GFCI that went off. But I'm searching the house and can't find it. I found 1 GFCI in the downstairs bath, and 2 in the kitchen. None of them had tripped, and resetting them didn't solve the problem. I've checked every wall of every room and can't find any more. It's an Engle house, near Vestals Gap. Anyone have any other ideas where to look or how to restore that circuit?

TIA

 

Two other places to check. See if you have a GFI outlet in the basement. That's where mine is that controls the outdoor lights. Or, see if you have a GFI circuit in your circuit box.

 

We had the same exact thing happen to us last year right before xmas. My kids were so sad and thought that Santa wouldn't be able to find them since the xmas lights were out. Our lights were out for a few days as we could not figure it out. We even had VM send an electrician to figure it out. We had our electrical plans to the house spread out and were looking for every GFI we could think of.

It turned out to be the GFI in the storage room in the basement on the wall opposite where the circuit breaker is (we live in a Parkdale).

 

Also check the circuit box, there are circuits breakers that include a GFI on the circuit breaker, in the circuit box. Not common but possible.

 

Our townhome has a GFI in the utility room, next to the hot water heater and furnace.

 

Mine is in the back of a closet on the lowest level of my townhouse...I went nuts trying to find it! I think the electricians who worked on some of these houses either had a whacked sense of humor or were totally incompetent...I'm hoping for the first one...since living in a house with questionable wiring scares me too much!

 

sounds like you are in a townhouse? And yes, generally everybody is correct. This is most likely a GFI issue. The outside outlets and lights are on a GFI. And most likely there is one in you furnace room, or near where your circuit box is located. This one will look different most likely since it is in the utility room, but it will still have the Reset and test buttons on it. And be very thorough with your testing. You may be able to reset the circuit but the second you plug something in, it will trip. Try to figure out every single outlet on this circuit and test each outlet by plugging something in to check and see if the GFI will reset. And another thing you could do, is terminate the outside outlet and just let the wires hang there, put wire nuts on them and then reset. Then go to the next outlet from the outside and do the same thing. Try to isolate the issue.

If you have a tester, you can look for a short and see which direction it is coming from. And the simple thing to do, and lowest cost will most likely be to "cap" off the outlet outside and not use it. You should have some kind of junction box outside too, that connects to your lamp. You should see a silver covered small box (flat cover) with screws. Open that too and make sure to check that in your testing. You could make that an outlet too if the other one is not working.

I say all of this assuming that you all have some knowledge of this kind of stuff. If you do not, then I suggest an electrician. Most likely, you have an issue with a short that is not as simple to diagnose or fix. I had to do all of this for the exact same reasons you describe and I spent 3 hours trying to figure this out and eventually confirmed that I was experiencing some kind of unexplained short on the outside outlet near my front door.

As soon as I took that out of the equation, and created an outlet instead at the junction box for the lamp, all is good.

 

Thanks everybody - I did find it with some help from these postings.
It's a single family, not a townhouse as some had guessed. I had checked every wall of every room, but this GFI is down in the basement behind the furnace under the stairs where there is no wall and where you can't really even get at without crawling.

 

hah, typical builder krapp!