Home electrical circuit dead

[Luke]

The electrical service to my house has a main panel with breaker switches and a sub-panel in the garage with breaker switches for each circuit in the house. One of the circuits has gone dead and I can use some help diagnosing it before I break down and call an electrician.

The dead circuit services the bathroom (with one gfci outlet), a bedroom and one outdoor gfci outlet.

These are the circumstances leading up to this situation:

I was using a power washer (with another gfci built-in to the plug) plugged in to the outdoor gfci outlet to wash my rear deck. While in the middle of this task the power washer suddenly went dead and since that time the electrical circuit is also dead. None of the breaker switches in the main panel nor in the sub-panel were triggered.

I have toggled the breaker switches in the main panel and the sub- panel. I have tried to reset both gfci's, (in the bathroom and the outdoor electrical outlet) to no avail. Neither one will reset. I have also replaced both gfci's and then tried to reset both of them. Again, neither one will reset.

Can anyone help me deduce what might have occurred and/or suggest how to fix this? I am suspicious that having two gfci's on the same circuit may have something to do with this.

TIA

Luke

[CJT]

Are you sure there's not a third GFCI somewhere?

[Red Green]

Luke wrote in news:1aceb795-312a-4854-8621- [e-mail]:

Highest probability is one of the outlets, including non GFCI, had a bad, corroded, lose connection. Power draw while using arc'd it.

Below assumes there are no switched outlets.

Kill the power for the circut. Remove an outlet from box on the circut. Don't disco wires. Just get access to terminals. Only a single black and white connected to it? If so, this outlet not the cause.

Multiple black & whites to outlet? If so, one cable is power in and the other power out. Circut power on. Check power going IN to the outlet No power coming in either cable? This outlet not the cause. Problem is upstream. Power on both cables This outlet not the cause. Problem is downstream. Power coming in and none going out? This outlet is bad.

Check all outlets on ckt. If you don't find one where power is only on one side of outlet, then it's possible outlet(s) are wired through a light fixture and problem is there.

[RBM]

Clearly an open circuit. The slightly peculiar thing is that you have an outside GFCI outlet and a bathroom GFCI outlet on the same circuit, but protected individually. If these two GFCI outlets were wired with connections in the "load" terminals, I would go with CJT's suggestion and look for a third GFCI device, possibly in the garage, or basement, that is protecting the entire circuit

[Charlie]

Not so clearly an open circuit. An open circuit would not prevent the GFCIs from resetting.

Charlie

[Nate Nagel]

Depending on the GFCI it might. ISTR that the new Leviton "smart lock" ones will not reset until power is restored, and those are the ones likely to be found at your local Big Box.

nate

[RBM]

All the newer GFCI outlets will lock out the reset button if there is no power, but my assumption was that the OP meant , restore electricity, when he said, "reset"