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Electrical Wiring

Low Power Outlets

14 years ago

Hello all. I have a situation where the outlets in my upstairs bathroom function at very low power, along with our outside outlets. I know there is some power being supplied to the bathroom outlets, as a nightlight we normally have plugged in will light very dimly if plugged in. What I have also found is that if I plug in another item (curling iron, lamp), the item I turn on will not work and the nightlight will shut off as well. If I unplug the other item, the nightlight comes back on dimly.

I've not tried the outside outlets to see if the nightlight will run on them, but I kind of suspect it might function the same as in the upstairs bathroom. What is odd about the outside outlets is we used them for our Christmas lights with no issue.

One of my daughters bedroom is next door to the upstairs bathroom. All of the outlets in her room work, as well as all of the outlets in my other daughter's room across the hall.

I am not an electrical expert by any stretch of the imagination, so if you have any ideas about what might be going on, I would appreciate hearing them.

Thanks.

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Comments (6)

hendricus
14 years ago
The bedrooms are on different circuits so a bathroom problem will not affect them.

Did you check for a tripped GFCI?
raider_power
Original Author
14 years ago
I have checked the two GFCI's I know of in my home and neither are tripped, but I have continued to look for another that I might not know about. We have been in this house for a long time, but I imagine it is possible there is one I have never seen because it is behind something. We have one in our kitchen and one in our master bathroom downstairs.

We had some workers out today and the GFCI in our master bathroom got tripped at some point. By coincidence, I was trying out the nightlight in the upstairs bath and found it did not work at all. I reset the offending GFCI and the nightlight began to work again at low power.

The unfortunate thing is we do not know exactly when this problem started happening. Our daughters primarily use the upstairs bath and one of my daughters plugged in a hair appliance and found it did not work, but never told us about it. It wasn't until a while later that we found out about the problem.

Thanks for the reply.
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raider_power
Original Author
14 years ago
I just checked our outside outlets and found they are functioning the same as the ones in the upstairs bath. If I plug in a nightlight, it works, but the light is dim. In our front outside outlet, I have found that I can position the nightlight a certain way and it will come on full power, but only very temporarily.

Frustrating problem to say the least. Will probably have to get someone out to take a look.
joefixit2
14 years ago
You just figured it out. There is a loose white wire connection at the front outside outlet.
raider_power
Original Author
14 years ago
joe, thanks for your reply. I've not looked at the outlet in front to see how I would go about getting into it. Is the outlet difficult to get into? Anything I should be aware of if I try to fix this myself (besides making sure to turn off the power :) )?
hendricus
14 years ago
Test outlet for power, shut off breaker, test outlet again.

Remove cover, one screw in center or two screw, top and bottom.

Remove screws at top and bottom of outlet.

Pull outlet straight out by holding ears on top and bottom.

TEST wires on each side of outlet before doing anything else. Test by touching one probe to black and the other to white. I use a 2 wire idiot light tester, 3 bucks or so.

Check for loose wires on outlet or in a wire nut, especially the white wires.

If no problem here check another outlet.

It is also possible that the white wire is loose in the circuit breaker box, I've found loose ones at our house.

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