Our master bathroom had a problem a few nights ago. I plugged the hairdryer in, something I usually don’t do for myself. This was for my self, and that means I was really wanting to use it! Anyway, to get back to the thing that happened, I plugged the hairdryer in and zap! A big spark came out of the plug area, then nothing. I had obviously turned the thing on, and immediately turned it off and unplugged it. It was like a one-second-deal “in-on-off-out” in one second flat.
So, I really wanted to use this thing. I brought it into the hall bathroom and plugged it in. Meanwhile Frank is saying he smells smoke … I turned the hairdryer on in that other bathroom, on low, and it went riiiiiiiiii! in a rising pitch tone then — nothing.
Weird.
Meanwhile back in the masterbathroom, there’s a definite smokey smell. Frank finally went down to shut off the power to that circuit, and get a fire extinguisher, just in case.
Well, that put our bedroom into the dark. Our bath and bedroom are connected on the same cicuit on the board. We couldn’t find our flashlight. We have candles, but not for really “seeing” by. So there we were in our master bedroom, with pillar candles to see where we were going, read in bed, etc.
The next day we took the receptacle apart. The GFCI didn’t trigger. The hot in lead wire burnt the back of the module, melted a big hole into it. We were very fortunate that that is all that happened.
The next day we bought a new receptacle. It was dark when we got home with it, so Frank got something I’ve wanted for years anyway, a cheap glass kerosene lamp. Boy what an improvement for reading in bed light!
OK, the next day, I tried to install the receptacle, but try as I might, I couldn’t get the wires to bend and stay around the screws. It was nasty. So Frank got home later and got it done. But then we turned on the electricity. It worked, not the GFCI though. So, one thing about that is, maybe it was swapped, load and lead swapped and GFCI won’t work.
So, we swapped them. That was a chore, due to how stiff all those wires were and they’d been in one position for over 5 years, and now Frank was trying to make them go elsewhere, new positions on the receptacle.
A note here to mention we first installed the wires exactly the same way they had been installed on the old receptacle.
So once the second wiring was in place. I turned the electricity on again. It worked. The lights, that is. GFCI still wouldn’t work. We have a hand held tester for that. The tester works on a receptacle in the kitchen. So, there’s something wrong in the circuit. Figures. It’ll work just find as a normal receptacle, it just won’t offer any GFCI.
Well, it didn’t beforehand either. So there was a problem, and we just didn’t know it.
The horrible thing is, did something break? or was it this way all along? We don’t know. We are of the dumb kind of people, who don’t test our GFCI receptacles. Well, we were. We sure will test them at least a few times a year, if not more.
This is just one more thing to get fixed now. We have other wiring we are concerned about as well, a light outside of the garage doesn’t work, and we’ve replaced it too. Oh, and our lamp post, the one every house in our place has in the front yard. It doesn’t work. I’d say over half of the lamp posts here don’t work. We’ve replaced the light-sensing module … it’s what seems to go bad. I don’t like having it on anyway, so it’s fine with me. It’s just something we need to get fixed to a working state, which it’s never truly been in. It goes on and off for a few weeks, then stays on day and night for several weeks and then dies off. Not something to keep replacing, if that makes any sense to anyone. It sure does to me!
Electricity. Ugh. It’s great, but what a pain too.