The outlets in my bathrooms have stopped working. All other outlets in my house work fine. One of the bathroom outlets has a gfci sticker on it, but none of them have the test/reset buttons. Nothing was tripped at the panel, and I switched each fuse off and back on. Any ideas what it could be?

I have two resets at my house. One on an outlet by the a/c unit, and one on an outlet on the back patio.

I have one GFCI outlet in the garage that all bathrooms are tied to - just go reset that.

The sticker means it has GF protection from another receptacle upstream someplace. You have to find the upstream receptacle and reset that one. As mentioned, check the garage, other bathrooms, front porch, back porch, attic, near your condensing unit, behind the SO's makeup workbench on the vanity counter, etc.

I have looked everywhere, even busted out the blueprints to see if there was a hidden outlet. I have resets in the kitchen and garage, already reset those and they are working, so the bathroom is not tied to those.

There is an AC closet next to one of the bathrooms. I noticed the 60s are up but the 30s are down. Didn't want to mess with them in case I screwed something up. Could that be a problem?

Sorry if this is a dumbass question.

The GFCI reset for my master bathroom is hidden inside my closet, which is accessed through the bathroom. It was a PITA to find because it was hidden behind hanging clothes. Maybe try looking in there?

The 30's are in the off position, which may be your issue. To turn them back on, you should move them all the way down and then back to the top. However, if that is in an AC closet, maybe it is only for the AC unit? Not sure....sorry

A guy I worked with found his gfci reset behind the back of a kitchen cabinet. So, I guess you could try taking all your cabinets off the wall...

Flipped the 30s up and nothing happened. Went over the blueprints for the house and didn't find any additional outlets on there I didn't know about. Going to go in the attic today since it's not on the blueprints.

Can I test the wires going to the back of the outlets with a multimeter to see if they're hot?

I bet there is an outlet in one of your bathrooms you are missing.

Do you have a jacuzzi tub? May have an outlet underneath there although it should be its own circuit.

Any of the bathrooms have a jacuzzi? Surely they didn't hide it there!

Yes, have a jacuzzi tub. There is an outlet underneath it that is on its own circuit. It actually takes up 2 spots in the breaker box.

Check

Front porch
Back porch
Garage
Closets near bath
Closets far from bath

Now check every outlet on every wall in every room.

This has always bugged me, as I've located the 'reset' button in the most illogical and inconvenient places, not just in my home, but in several friends' homes as well.

I realize electrical contractors bid jobs and low cost wins bids, but doggoneit!

GFCI outlets are $10/each in quantity. There are probably no more than (12) of these in the average home. Maybe you BMA types have twice that number.

Even if you're sharing circuit (breaker) wiring among several protected outlets, just make every GFCI receptacle independent and you'll never have to do the dance of 'where the heck is my reset button'.

So, am I missing something here or is this pita just to save $120 initially, plus the cost of replacement GFCI's over the life of the home?

Since that outlet dies not have the reset are there any other outlets that do not work?

Maybe use a hairdryer or something to seeing you can find something on the circuit.


May just for the heck of it you might get luck and check and see if there is power going to the outlet wiring via a meter or test light.

If all else fails you can get a circuit tracer from Home Depot for about $40.

The breaker says 1 and 3 belong to the jacuzzi.



I just checked the outlet under the tub again and that outlet is not working either. I'm guessing this is the circuit the rest of the bathroom outlets are on. The outlet is in a metal box that is not attached to anything, it is just laying there. I also noticed a random copper wire not attached to anything. Could that possibly be a ground that came loose?

It's definitely a ground wire. The actual breaker may be bad too. They go out occasionally. I've replaced two in the last couple years.

Trip and reset the beaker and see what happens

Pushing the red button on the breaker trips it, but switching it back on does not make the outlets work.

Update : the bathroom outlets are now working. The only thing I did was open up one of the outlets. I noticed one screw on each side of the outlet was not screwed in, so I screwed them in and everything started working. Not sure if that actually fixed it or something else I might have fiddled with did it.



Also, the bathroom outlets are not on the jacuzzi circuit. With the jacuzzi turned off at the breaker, the bathroom outlets still work.

However, the jacuzzi outlet is broken. Might be the fuse in the breaker. How would I test that? I also noticed in the jacuzzi outlet, the hot wire went into the bottom hole while the neutral is going to the top. Never seen that before, so wondering if that was a mistake. I tried moving the hot wire to the top hole, but it still didn't work.

Circuits 1/3 for the jacuzzi is a GFI breaker. Pushing the button is the tester on it, which trips it.

Loosing a ground connection won't affect operation. It would still work.

The screws you tightened are made for a connection like the one below it. They don't need to be tightened unless there's a wire there. The outlet is connected with the stab in connections on the back, which aren't as tight as using the screw. The stab ins can sometimes come loose. It's likely that messing with the receptacle wiggled the stab in to get it working again.

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the hot wire went into the bottom hole while the neutral is going to the top.

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What are you calling top/bottom hole?

There's no fuse in the breaker. It uses a magnetic coil to trip.

Underoos, thanks for the responses. Sorry if my explanations are lacking, I'm sure I sound like a moron trying to explain this.

Two questions.

I'm convinced that the bathroom circuit does not have a gfci outlet on it at the moment. The master bathroom was renovated by the previous homeowners, so it's possible they took the gfci out and replaced it with a regular outlet. Should I put a new gfci on the circuit?

Second, the jacuzzi outlet is not working. As far as I can tell, there is only one outlet on that circuit. Would replacing the fuse in the breaker box be the best place to start? The outlet itself was wired in a way I haven't seen before.


The hot usually goes to 1 and the neutral usually goes to 2, but in this case, the hot was going to 3 while the neutral was going to 2. I haven't used the bathtub in over a year, but I'm pretty sure the jacuzzi worked before. I was wondering if there was a reason it was wired like that, and if that was correct, or if I should move the hot wire to hole 1.

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I'm convinced that the bathroom circuit does not have a gfci outlet on it at the moment. The master bathroom was renovated by the previous homeowners, so it's possible they took the gfci out and replaced it with a regular outlet. Should I put a new gfci on the circuit?

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Wouldn't hurt. A GFCI will have line and load terminals. The voodoo black box in the GFCI will protect the receptacle itself, and anything downstream that is connected to the LOAD terminals. That's how one device protects a whole bunch of other receptacle in a newer installation. If you can figure out which circuit (or circuits) the bathroom recepatacles is/are on, and you can figure out which device is the first one on the circuit, i.e. the first one coming from the panel, you can use one device to protect them all. Seeing as how it's an existing and "remodeled" installation, I'd probably put an individual GFCI in each bathroom and be done with it. $12ish on a device is cheap compared to chasing ghosts in existing wiring. If you put a GFCI in each bathroom, or rather at each receptacle location in each bathroom (because I have no idea how many you've got), use only the LINE terminals.

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Second, the jacuzzi outlet is not working. As far as I can tell, there is only one outlet on that circuit. Would replacing the fuse in the breaker box be the best place to start?

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From the picture, you have circuit breakers not fuses. The circuit breaker feeding the jacuzzi could have crapped out.

How the hell do you spell jacuzzi? NVM, F U spellcheck.

From just the picture, it's kinda hard to tell for sure whether the circuit breaker feeding the fizzy tub is a 120V circuit with the GFCI part taking up the second spot, or if it's in fact a 240V breaker. I would certanily hope its the former considering it's feeding a plain old receptacle.

Has the fizzy tub ever worked? Does it have a heater as well, or just bubble maker?

You can test the circuit breaker with a volt meter. If the breaker is on and you don't read 120ish volts from the load side breaker to the neutral or to ground, then the breaker is hosed. Considering it's a GFCI breaker, it wouldn't be a shocker (no pun intended) if it was dead.

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The outlet itself was wired in a way I haven't seen before.


The hot usually goes to 1 and the neutral usually goes to 2, but in this case, the hot was going to 3 while the neutral was going to 2. I haven't used the bathtub in over a year, but I'm pretty sure the jacuzzi worked before. I was wondering if there was a reason it was wired like that, and if that was correct, or if I should move the hot wire to hole 1.

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The receptacle has the hot side with the brass screws and short terminal, and the neutral side with the silver screws and wide terminal. The receptacle doesn't care if you use the top stab-in, the bottom stab-in, the top screw, or the bottom screw - they are all connected together internally per side.

If your jacuzzi outlet is wired to code, depending on age of the house, it should be on a gfci circuit as well. Typically I've seen them on a gfci push button without the outlets. Our electricians put them in an adjacent closet, toilet room, etc so they are nearby but not able to reset while in the tub. Maybe look behind clothes in a closet, in cabinets, etc.. Can you see where the wire from the box laying on the ground heads toward? It looks as though it goes back under the tub toward the opposite side/ to the right.

The red push button breaker in the panel is a gfci as well. When it's tripped or turned off, do the bathroom outlets work? Do you have a test meter or current tester checking the wires for voltage or just plugging in an appliance? Sometimes breakers can be tripped but not obvious by sight.

The wires in the top or bottom hole of the outlet do not matter. In the earlier picture with the jacuzzi plug removed from the box you can see the metal tab bridging between the metal back plates behind the screws. If this tab is in place, then there is current at both outlets and wires can be placed at either screw. Is some cases, like a single duplex outlet under a sink, you can break the metal tab off and make each outlet hot independently. Such as a constant hot for the dishwasher and a switched outlet for a disposal. Then it would matter which holes you used in the screw or stab locations.

Thanks for the responses. I will try replacing the circuit breaker first. Is that something I can safely do myself?

The jacuzzi outlet is accessed via a small door at the end of the tub. The tub is in the corner of the house, so nothing else down there is really accessible except through the small door. I'm pretty sure the jacuzzi worked before. Just bubbles but no heat, afaik.

Just to be clear, I can have multiple gfci push button outlets on the same circuit?

Also, they make a plug tester, it's a plug that plugs into an outlet and light up in certain combinations to tell you if something is wired correctly. They also have gfci test trip buttons on them that when pressed, they trip the circuit to make sure it is wired properly. Key is having someone around to help listen for the trip noise so you can track it down to reset it. If it is already in a gfci protected circuit, typically you don't add an additional gfci behind a primary gfci as they don't tend to work properly unless wired correctly from the primary. There is a line and load side of the gfci, one for the hot coming in and the other is the protected going out.

Invest in a voltage meter and plug gfci tester. Don't get a hot stick tester. My electricians call them stupid sticks. They just detect current, not necessarily the correct amount of voltage, so any feed back, interference, etc will set it off.

Replacing a breaker is fairly straight forward. But it is dangerous. There is high voltage in the metal bars behind the breakers that they stab into, so accidental contact can be bad news, either by skin or tools.

A voltage meter testing the wires coming out of the breaker should tell you if you are getting the proper voltage from the breaker. Touch the black to neutral and red to the exposed part of the wire coming out of the breaker.

http://www.do-it-yourself-help.com/gfci_wiring_diagrams.html

There can be multiple push buttons on one Cochin if they are all wired to the line side. Protected outlets behind the gfci should be wired to the load side.

In the picture of the jacuzzi door, you can see the white romex S curve back to the right. I just wondered which direction it went, if that would be where the reset was if its not tied straight to the breaker. But I'd suggest checking/ replacing the breaker and then testing the outlet/ wires at the outlet to see if the breaker controls the outlet. We did a bath remodel last year and the jacuzzi gfci was in the breaker box in the garage. It was built early 90's.

The large ground may be a ground that was/ is connected to the jacuzzi motor but not tied in to anything. Some of the motors have a ground lug on the outside of the motor.