So I had a power outage last week, one that required me upon the power coming back to flip all my breakers from on to off to on again. Upon coming back everything seemed fine, until i tried plugging my radio into the bathrooms power outlet and nothing happened. I then tried to plug a fan in and no dice. I quickly noticed every single bathroom power outlet in my house (all 3 bathrooms) power outlets no longer work despite the lights themselves working normally. They’re all on different circuits too so it’s not a single breaker or circuit fault. My house is 40 years old and the plugs don’t seem that old. I have no idea why every single power outlet specifically tied to a bathroom decided to die. Any ideas?
(Also no the bathroom power outlets don’t have those buttons you press for power surges)
Ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI); if the interrupter isn’t on the outlet side it is built into the breaker. Check the circuit box and reset the breakers.
As Stranger said, power outlets in bathrooms are normally protected by a GFCI. But my house (1981, Canada), had a “Razor Only” outlet in the bathroom instead.
If you look at the pictures on this page, are your bathroom outlets the 2-prong “Razor Only” type, the 3-prong GFCI outlet type (with 2 buttons and an LED), or are they conventional 3-prong outlets ?
There are usually three possibilities for GFCI location: the outlet itself (which should be obvious from the “Test” and “Reset” buttons), on the breaker panel, and the third option is that the outlet is wired together with another GFCI-protected outlet which has tripped – like maybe an outlet in another bathroom. It sure does sound like a GFCI issue somewhere.
A razor outlet is a safety design that was created prior to GFCIs. Basically, it uses a small 1:1 transformer to limit the current out of the outlet for safety. They were replaced by GFCI outlets and are obsolete now.
They aren’t very common. You can sometimes find one in older homes.
The box they sit in is larger than a standard size electrical box for an outlet (has to have room inside for the transformer) but there are kits available that allow you to replace the razor outlet and its transformer with a modern GFCI outlet.
I’m with @wolfpup on this one. Sounds like a GFCI issue.
Maybe there’s a sub-panel somewhere that someone installed so that they could add GFCI breakers to the bathrooms?
Can you take pictures of the outlets and pictures of your breaker panel?
If they are razor outlets, it’s possible that whatever caused the power outage also caused the transformers in the razor outlets to burn out.
This happened to my sister. We eventually found a GFCI outlet in the garage that had tripped. The garage is at the opposite end of the house from her bathrooms.
My GFCI chains are odd. For instance, there used to be electrical outlets on either side of the wall between my master bedroom and master bath. The bedroom side had a GFCI installed, and all the plugs in the bathroom were downstream of that. So if I needed to reset the circuit, I had to press the reset button in the bedroom.
That’s what I was going to suggest. I have a friend whose GFCI for the bathroom is on an outlet in the garage. To the OP, I’d go around looking for GFCI outlets in various places in the house, starting with the garage, and seeing if any of them can be reset.
We also have (at least one of) our GFCIs routed through the garage.
I don’t understand how that saves money though - it has to be cheaper to put in GFCI outlets in each room instead of running wire through the whole house? Or, and I am not an electrician, do you only want a single GFCI on a circuit?
Yeah, it does actually save money, and it’s safe to do. It’s just that you pay for it by having to walk to the other end of the house to reset the circuit whenever it trips. Or sometimes by having to go to a message board to figure out why the damn outlets aren’t working.
While two button GFCI outlets are common, there are one button types. There, in a sense, might not be any buttons on any of your GFCI outlets. It’s at the circuit breaker panel. Or a panel nearby or …
When checking for the controlling outlet, be sure to also check outdoor outlets.
Since one GFCI protected circuit tripped, there might be others that also tripped and you wouldn’t notice for months (like an outdoor circuit). One of those handy outlet checkers is good for going around testing a bunch of things.
Often times all the outlets that need to be protected are put on one breaker. The breaker may be a GFI breaker. A GFI breaker along with having the normal switch (toggle0 will also have a button to test the breaker.
A GFIC outlet will have two buttons on it. ONe labeled test, the other reset. If you bathroom outlets are ont GFIC outlets then you are going to have to locate the GFIC outlet. It may be in the garage, kitchen, one bathroom or maybe even outside…
More that it allows the ground to float. That way, you won’t shock yourself if you get between one of the poles and a real ground (like the faucet). The low current limit is still pretty high in stopping-the-heart terms.
I can attest to some wonky GFCI setups. A member of our condo complex had her garage outlets stop working. I had previously found that my garage outlets were shared with ones under my kitchen sink. I had her reset all the GFCIs in the bathrooms and the kitchen–bingo, the garage outlets started working again.
