For diagnosis of home electrical problems, ever wish you had a house wiring diagram, or reliable online advice?. I am Laurence (aka Larry) Dimock, The Circuit Detective, a master electrician in Washington state who concentrated on troubleshooting home electrical problems. I used to offer email and phone advice from here, but now that I've retired, you'll have to rely on this did-it-myself website to fix your problem, as over 13 million have since 2004.They say the site is exceptional. U.S. and Canada only.
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When troubleshooting electrical problems in a house, you can avoid watts of frustration by learning or reviewing things about your electrical system. When you have learned enough, you'll be ready to go to the page for Troubleshooting these problems in your own home. Your Home Electrical System: Electricity flows to your lights and appliances from the power company through your panel, its breakers, out on your circuits and back. Here is a schematic picture of all the major parts of your home electrical system.
Why should a system which has few moving parts be subject to failures of various kinds? Realize that every technology designs its systems with economy in mind. Even the best available wire connector, for instance, could have been made from even better materials that would have made problems with it even less likely.
Locate a bad connection by checking and improving those at the interface between the dead things and any live things nearby (especially of that circuit, if you know it). Unplug or switch off everything you can (especially on that circuit, if you know it); then try resetting again. Break the circuit's hot apart midway along the circuit and try resetting; continue reconnecting the circuit and breaking the hot apart at other places (one at a time) to narrow down where the fault is occurring.If it was the GFI retripping, go back after these procedures and break the neutral apart in a similar way in case this will narrow the location down.
I hope the Background page has given you a picture of the extent and complexity of the electrical system of your home. Now you can begin to see how to go about troubleshooting electrical problems systematically. I do not want to discourage intuition, but it is easy to make false assumptions about what is going on.
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