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Electrical help

The Watcher

By The Watcher,
in Huddle Lounge

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The Watcher Newbie

The Watcher

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So after a recent storm, and very close lightning strike we have three outlets that won't work.

The strike fried a few things, our garage door opener among them (had to replace the whole unit.) It tripped a few other GFCI lines, but they all reset.

One of the three dead ones is a GFCI outlet on the front porch. The other two are regular receptacles inside the garage, on the porch side, and have stickers saying that they are fed from a GFCI line.

My assumption is that they are all on the same breaker/line. What I assume is the correct breaker in the panel is labeled as "Garage Recepts." It is not tripped, and I tested it in the panel and it is putting out around 120 Volts like it is supposed to. It is a regular 20A breaker.

I bought a new GFCI outlet for the porch and replaced it. It won't reset, and I still can't get power to any of the three outlets.

Suggestions? Short in one of the other two regular receptacles? Bad new GFCI off the shelf? Burnt up wire?

This is the only GFCI outlet we have outside, and the only other outside outlet is a normal one, and it has power.

 

 

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The Watcher

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10 hours ago, cookinbrak said:

Hook up the GFCI without hooking up the line side. If it doesn't trip, hook up the other outlets one at a time to isolate where a short could be. (Don't unhook everything, just the hot wire. Check the GFCI, then the first outlet, then the second.)

Hi there.

This confused me a little. The old GFCI was wired to the line side, so that's how I hooked up the new one. The on-receptacle GFCI breaker won't reset. In fact, it doesn't seem like I even have hot power to the wires going to the outlet.

That made me think there was another GFCI somewhere upstream between this outlet and the breaker in the panel. The problem there is that I don't see/can't find anything else not working besides these three outlets.

Shouldn't the GFCI be the first outlet on the line, if it indeed feeds/protects the other two in the garage that are dead?

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The Watcher

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11 minutes ago, cookinbrak said:

I don't know why I said line, it's line in, load out. Just hook up the gfci and make sure it works. Then you can start isolating and tracing.

I'm actually starting to think it might be a bigger problem. Something in the in-wall wiring burnt up, or something incorrectly wired from the time it was built.

I can't recall every using the outlets on that side of the inside of the garage, but I am sure we have. I know for a fact that the GFCI on the porch worked before the lightning strike. It is just weird that all three are now out, and I can't get the new GFCI outlet to reset/have power.

There is only three wires in the GFCI box. A hot, neutral, and ground. When I unhooked the old one, it was hooked up on the line side, so I hooked it back up the same way when I put the new one in.

It doesn't seem like I've even got power to the back of the outlet. The GFCI won't reset, so I put the tester up to the wires on both sides of the outlet and it isn't showing any voltage coming in.

If the GFCI is indeed on the circuit that the other two receptacles in the garage are on, shouldn't it be feeding them via the load, or at least more than three wires in the GFCI box? Could the breaker show good in testing, even if it was bad? (I tested the post on the breaker and the ground/neutral strap in the panel, and all breakers show around 120v)

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