In my house, I usually hang out in my basement. I have a 61" DLP tv, a Wii, a Xbox, a dvd player, and a satellite player on two power strips on my center wall. On my left wall, it was cold, so I plugged in a 1500w heater straight into the outlet. On the right wall, I plugged in an iron I bought two years ago, straight into the outlet. About 20 minutes into my ironing, my heater and my iron go dead. What happened? I flipped all my switches in my circuit breaker and the outlets are still dead, though admittedly, I might have had the heater and the iron still in the wall when I went to flip switches.
Assuming that I go home and I unplug everything and then flip the circuit breaker switches, and it is still not working, how serious a problem is this? The center wall still works fine, and when I need to vacuum, I plug into one of the power strips. I haven’t tried any of the other wall outlets. Thanks in advance.
If flipping the breakers doesn’t restore power, my guess is you’re overlooking a tripped GFI outlet somewhere. It’ll most likely be the first outlet in the chain in your basement, but where exactly it’ll be located, I couldn’t begin to tell you. When you find it, push the reset, and all should be well.
If all breakers are on, you may have burnt out a connection at one of the outlets. Something like a terminal screw was loose, or a wire was nicked long ago, and the point where it was nicked gave out or the tiny point contact inside a cheap “back-stab” outlet burnt up would be likely cuplrits.
This is a pretty serious problem - you’re lucky that it “blew” quickly and completely. Bad connections can start fires if they stay hot for a long time.
A relatively remote possibility is that you burnt out the breaker itself, but that’s almost rare compared to bad connections elsewhere.
Just to be sure, did you flip the breakers by going to the right to reset them before turning them to the on position. My brother called me a few years ago thinking he had a serious problem when it was just a matter of not knowing how to reset the breakers.
An iron draws about the same as your heater, which is lots. Assuming you’re somewhere in North America, standard breakers are rated for 15 Amps. Your heater alone draws 12.5, so an overload was inevitable.
That said, I’d bet big money on HongKongFooey’s post. When a breaker trips, the breaker switch isn’t guaranteed to show as off. To reset it, you have to switch it to off, then back on again.
P.S. - Don’t go resetting breakers without doing something about your electrical devices first! They trip for a reason, and resetting them without unplugging some things and checking for faults defeats their entire purpose.
Well three possibilities have been stated. Just by experience alone would guess that the probabilities are
80% - You need to push the breaker switch manually to OFF then ON to reset it. Most breker switches won’t stay in the on position until you do this.
15% - You have tripped the GFCI. It looks like a normal outlet except there are usually buttons between the two recepticles. you need to find it (it should also be in your basement) and reset it by first pushing the test button then the reset button.
5% - your wiring has burned to open. This requires an experienced person with wiring (electrician) to fix.
If trying the solutions in the first two yeilds no results you need to call in experienced help.
Just so you’re aware-GFCI receptacles do NOT provide overcurrent protection. That is a common misconception. A GFCI circuit breaker combines ground fault and overcurrent protection into one device.