Okay, not sure if this is the place to start this thread but I'm in dire need of advice. Of course the 2 electricians I phoned didn't answer, probably because it is a Sunday so I'm reaching out to CD. We have a 30 year old house and probably with the original electricial. Now, I'm upstairs vaccuming, and the vaccum shuts off from it's outlet along with 5 other outlets throughout the house. Now normally, if a fuse blows, I just press the button in the fusebox and it goes back on. This time, none of the buttons needed to be pressed and when I went back to check all the outlets, all 5 of them are now not working. Is this something that can wait till morning until I can hunt down an electrician? Of course I'm worried about a fire with a family of six, my DH knows nothing about this issue and I'm panicked. Can anyone reassure me? Please only those that may be sure about this. Jeannie
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Yes you can relax I think. I had this happen at my last house and the problem was all the dead things were on the same circuit so if something goes, everything passed that point goes.
The most likely culprit is an outlet. They don't all last forever and sometimes if you remove the cover you can see a little burn mark where it blew at the connection. If that is the case you just need a new outlet which costs a couple of dollars and to turn off your power and connect the new one. You need to test both the bottom and top of the outlet and sometimes you find only one is working and that is enough to stop what comes after on that circuit from working.
The other possibility happened in my last house. One of the lights on the circuit connected in the attic. When the weather changed the wiring expanded and contracted and it ended disconnecting. That caused an arc (electricity jumping) which could have been very dangerous as it could have set off the insulation.
With stuff like this it is helpful to have someone who knows electrical even a little to find the problem (fixing it may indeed need a pro). Electricians have neat little tools they use to follow the circuit and they can find the problem where the electricity stops flowing pretty quickly.