Receptacle Dead, Cir Brkr OK

I have a receptacle that has suddenly gone dead. The circuit breaker is fine and everything else on that circuit works. Using a two-prong tester the receptacle appears hot. Leaving the tester inserted into the receptacle, with light glowing, plugging in a working lamp into bottom receptacle the tester's lamp goes off. Remove the lamp (or turn it off) and the tester glows again. What is up with this? Thanks for any and all help. -Jeff Linder ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com)

Reply to
Jeff Linder
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Reply to
Tony Hwang

What you discribe sounds like a loose connection (high resistance) someplace in the wiring to that recepticale. Just enough current is getting through the poor connection to operate the test instrument but when you try to draw a higher current, nothing gets through.

You should check the connection in the receptical you are testing. Also, household recepticales are often 'daizy chained', one outlet after another.. Any receptical in the chain, between the circuit breaker and the problem one could have a loose connection..

I had a similar problem and after checking and replacing three suspected recepticales, I found the problem was a arched and burned contact where the circuit breaker clips onto the panel buss bar...

Both the breaker and the buss bar were damaged and not only did have to put in a new breaker, but I had to move it to an empty location in the panel.

Steve

Reply to
Steve

I'd fogotten to mention that I already installed a new receptacle (yeah, they're real cheap). But your theory sounds plausible and I'm going to replace all the receptacles in this circuit and check everything else in this circuit. Let's see if this works. Thanks. In your case, how did you discover that your probem was the burned contact where the circuit breaker clips onto the panel buss bar? Process of elimination? -Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Linder

I had traced the circuit problem back all the way to the breaker panel and was ready to replace the breaker. When I pulled the breaker out of the panel, it was obvious that it had been over heating and arcing between the contacts and the buss bar.

There was so much arc splatter on the buss bar that I couldn't clean it off with a file.. Total loss of that slot.

Steve

Reply to
Steve

Probably wired with the "stab in" connections. Snip it off, and rewire it with the screw terminals on the side of the outlet.

Reply to
Charles H. Stevens

Yes, or one of the oultets upstream feeding it. thanks, Tony D.

Reply to
Tony D.

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