Household electrical problem

jennigrey
All of the circuit that is open and has the multiple wires tied doesn't work but that probably is not all that is on that circuit. Mobile home manufacturers wire both lights and receptacles to share a single breaker. I understand this is so that in emergency some overhead lights and possibly some lamps which are plugged into receptacles may still work thus lighting the way to an exit. In some mobile homes a single receptacle in the living room may feed the receptacle in the adjacent bedroom and then fed up to the hall overhead light and then to the bathroom. Reference Mr Pinks reply. If you were more experienced electrically I would give you a task to try but I do not feel comfortable in doing so. For now try to locate some non working receptacles in adjacent rooms to the non working light and remove the cover and look for a loose or burn wire.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Do your recepticals have screws on the back or are they the kind that the wire just stick in a hole? The latter are notorious for pulling out, especially if you jostled the wire a bit. I would check the one nearest the breaker first although sometimes they are routed backwards. Good luck.

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Dear Math, it is time you grew up and solved your own problems.

I am a retired electrician & I agree with the last two posts . I would start with the closest non working device to the breaker panel & look for loose or burned wires . If you don't find anything there move on to the next closest device . The closest one may not actually be the first one in the circuit . If you have voltage on all wires ( checked where the wire is under the breaker screw ) the problem is not the breaker . If you know which wire in the panel is the dead circuit , make sure the white wire that goes with the dead circuit is tight in the buss bar in the panel . If you have voltage on all black wires ( on breakers ) leaving the panel & all the white wires are tight under their screws , then you have a live circuit going to either a receptacle , switch or light fixture somewhere . Finding the first non working device in that circuit should isolate your problem .

Poppy posted while I was typing .

This kind of stuff can make your head hurt. If you haven't checked for voltage at each outlet first that might be on the same circuit as the light do that using a inexpensive test light. That will tell you if voltage is present but not if the circuit can carry a load. Sometimes if you have a bad connection, you read the correct voltage with a meter but once you connect/plug something in the voltage will drop to zero and the thing plugged into the outlet will not work.

If you only plug the item in far enough to leave some of the plug exposed, you can put the meter leads on the exposed plug pins and see the voltage drop when the item is turned on.

If you see a voltage drop doing that, you usually have a loose connection.

I think as others are mentioning, & my first suggestion - is where you will find your problem.

When the light fixture shorted out, it took out a weak connection in the wiring. A loose screw, something oxidized, a nipped wire - someplace where there was a poor connection between metals.

You need to inspect these with a tester & visually. Every screw, every push-together connection (ugh - these are terrible to start with), every wire nut is suspect. It could be a bad wire strip that nicked or cut the wire a bit back from the connection. _Someplace_ the connections are no longer connecting, and these are the obvoius starting places.

If you get this figured out without hurting yourself, you might have prevented a fire in your house down the road - such loose connections can cause sparking, heat, and charring down the road over time.

It would be logical to start with the outlet or switch closest to the main breaker box - but it doesn't have to be esp in a mh. Iin a mobile home that is not always obvious to figure out which one, and the wiring in those can be a bit different! It's cheaper living for a reason....

--->Paul

This is what I was saying, only better stated. You also need to check the wire nuts. Alot of times people will not twist the wires before they put on the wire nut, and that can cause one or more of the wires to not have a good connection in it. To check the wires in the nut, just give each individual wire a tug, if it is not connected properly, then it will pull out.

The outlets and switches are all the wire-under-a-screw type, not the push-in type.

Right now the breaker to that circuit is off and I have run a couple of extension cords from the other half of the house into the bathroom and the office so I can see what I'm doing back there. I'll be working on this over the weekend. I SO APPRECIATE all the advice and suggestions!

Well, finally got around to working on that dead circuit.

I could easily get at all the outlets and switches except two, which were behind shelving units that needed to be unloaded and dragged out of the way. Wouldn't you know it, behind the heaviest one was an outlet that had those stupid push-in type wire connections... probably the only such outlet in the whole mobile home.

The hot wire connections had cooked and the plastic was scorched, melted and crumbling. Replaced that outlet and now we're back in bid'ness.

Thanks again to everyone who helped!

Congratulations. Well done.