Adventures In Home Improvement (7/29/2006)

Electrical Outlet Repair

Oh how I dislike doing home repair. Okay, strike that. Doing home repair is quite fun for me. When in the ridiculously off-chance that everything (okay, okay, ONE thing) actually works.

Today was a long-overdue adventure in replacing electrical outlets. The entire east wall is powerless. I did some testing with a nifty little electrical outlet testing...thing. It had a black wire and a red wire, attached to a readout that included "110", "210" and the like, and each wire terminated in a couple of cool looking spikes that apparently are supposed to be stuck into the individual slots of the outlet to be tested. (Of course this was something I preferred doing when my kids weren't watching, for obvious reasons.) Anyway, the testing revealed that I had an "Open Neutral"--the actual name of which I got from my brother-in-law who'd recently discovered the same situation in his electrical setup.

"Just go to the electrical panel and be sure all the white (neutral) wires are screwed down nice and tight."

Sounded reasonable.

"But be careful; there's still a lot of electricity running around in that box."

Yay.

So, I went to the box, opened it up, and sure enough, every wire I could see and (very carefully) touch--with the end of my screwdriver--was screwed down nice and tight.

What's left? Well, replacing all of the outlets, of course, because surely if nothing's loose in the panel, chances are quite good that there must be something wrong with one of the outlets, or the wires in each of the outlets' boxes.

Three and half hours later, all outlets on the east wall (and one on the south) are replaced. I call down to the wife to have her throw the breaker switch (believe it or not I was actually smart enough to shut off the breaker every time I opened up an outlet cover). No change. Open Neutrals all over the place.

Being rather happy that the kids are in bed so they couldn't hear the rather impressive list of expletives building up pressure behind my lips, I swallowed hard and didn't give in to the temptation to let loose a blue streak that would do many a sailor--or rapper--proud. The wife was still up and around, after all.

Looks like I get to contact one of my old students with whom I agreed to trade lessons for electrical work, considering he's an electrician. Lucky him.

I love home improvement. It's not unlike a rather swift kick in the boys.


Update (8/4/2006):
Success! An incredible, liberating, exulting...and a bit embarrassing...success!

A few months ago when I was looking into the above electrical problem I noticed an outlet that had a white wire unattached to anything. Not knowing anything about such things I assumed that that was the way it was supposed to be, so I taped it off to prevent any kind of shorting or the like, and closed it back up.

You see, I thought that it was entirely possible that the east wall's lack of power was probably a short due to that wire touching something it shouldn't. This was supported by the scorch marks I saw on the outlet plate and box. Surely the wire had been touching something it should not have been, shorted, and caused a near-fire. The near-fire then burned back whatever the wire was touching, so it wasn't touching anymore, clearly preventing further shorting and possibly a worse fire. Add that to the fact that the bared part of the loose wire was straight, and anything attached to the outlet had a nice loop in it so the wire could go around the fastening screw, it was obvious the wire never had been attached to the outlet. Logical safety precaution: prevent shorting and possible fire; tape up loose white wire.

Well, that clearly didn't solve the problem. A few months go by--okay, about a year goes by--and we have a bunch of shiny, all-but-new electrical outlets that are getting no power.

I talked over the problem with my brother-in-law some more, and that one loose wire came up in the discussion, rather as a side-note to something else. As you probably guessed, that was the problem. That was the neutral wire that was suppose to complete the circuit, and it was the wire that was the neutral for the rest of the east wall. And it wasn't connected, so all that juice had nowhere to go, except to ground.

I attached that white wire (after removing all my masterfully-applied electrical tape, of course), and bingo. Everything works.

Yay me. Okay, okay, yay my brother-in-law.