This morning, 3 electrical sockets all stopped working. They do not have anything too power hungry plugged in to them, just my PC and related equipment, a television and a cable box.

I checked all the breakers in the basement, and they are in the on position. I switched them all off then back on again and still no power to the three sockets. The labeling on the main panel is not very good so I can't work out which breaker is for these three sockets. Everything else in the house is working.

The three sockets are quite close together and are in the dining room area. There are two other sockets in the dining room that are still working.

The only think I can think off is that a cable has come loose somewhere or something has eaten through one.

Before I end up paying out for an electrcian, does anyone have any suggestions?

Mark

Do you have any GFI sockets anywhere in the circuit? Like in the bathroom maybe? Or on the outside of the house? If the GFI is out, anything further down the line will be too.

Is there what looks like a light switch in the room somewhere? My sitting room has no ceiling light but there is a switch on the wall. It controls the sockets.

Yes there is a light switch that controls one of the three sockets, I have checked that and it's on, and in any event even if it was off the other two would still work.

Well there are none close by, i haven't checked the bathrooms upstairs as couldn't see what these three sockets would be on the same line as the bathroom. I will try it. The outside sockets from and back are both working.

There is one GFI in the bathroom upstairs, and it's working.

Do you have a voltmeter? If you are confident to do so, remove the front cover and check that you have 120V to neutral on all your circuit breaker to at least eliminate a defective circuit breaker.
Next a visual check of the receptacle wiring and voltage checks on each termination to at least find where you are losing the power.

Darren

I do have a volt meter, and i am hoping it is a defective circuit breaker , not that confident about messing around with the mains panel though, I will change a socker or light switch, not attempted much more than than, I may have a poke around though, thanks.

Mark

The mains panel does have a main shut-off breaker you can trip before doing any work on the panel itself.

If it is only three duplex outlets I would doubt that it would be the circuit breaker. It would be very unusual (not out of the question but unusual) to have only three outlets on a circuit.

Ok it's fixed now. Had an electrician round this afternoon and now $300 worse off. Although having had to get trades people round to fix things in the UK I would say that it was a more positive experience here.

Not being derogatory about UK Trades people it's just the "well I can't get to you for another three weeks" or the extortionate call out charges I'm referring to.

Anyway it turns out that the downstairs bathroom fan is also on the same circuit as the three electrical sockets and because the connection to the switch that operates the fan hadn't been secured properly it had arced and damaged the switch and broken then connection on the circuit or something like that.

Wow. Good thing you still have a house.

Spooky. That was going to be my next suggestion.

then I would owe you $300!!

Now he has shown me if it happens again somewhere else I will know what to look for.

Yes, I could have lived without the three sockets for a while, but you don't know if anything more serious is going, so glad it's sorted now. It's a little cold at the moment to be homeless!

$300 worse off, but at least you have peace of mind.

As for the three week thing it does happen here too unfortunately. We had our furnace go out on us on a Sunday afternoon in February a number of years ago. I called a local well known furnace company's emergency number. Young lady answered, I told here we had no heat, furnace was dead and I had tried all easy things, she says we can get someone out to you on Thursday to which I incredulously replied it's minus 15 outside we have no heat and the best you can do is Thursday I thought this was an emergency number. Her answer was it is an emergency number and Thursday is a soon as we can get out to you.

Needless to say I found someone else, it turned out to be the thermocouple. So I always kept a spare after that and had watched closely when it was installed so it was easy to replace myself.