What To Do If An Outlet Isn’t Working— And It’s Not the Circuit Breaker

When you plug something in at home, you expect the receptacle (aka outlet) to have power. If it doesn’t, you probably know to check and reset the circuit breaker. But what if the breaker didn’t trip? What’s next? Before you call an electrician like me, it’s worth it to try a few easy things first. You might just solve your own problem, and save some money to boot.

Why Do Circuit Breakers Trip?

Circuit breakers trip for three main reasons: short circuits, overloads and ground faults.

• Short circuits happen when an electrical current takes a “shortcut” back to the electrical panel instead of feeding the load it’s supposed to be powering. An example is when a hot wire accidentally touches another hot wire or neutral, often due to worn insulation or loose wire terminations. Short circuits cause extremely high currents, so a breaker opens the circuit before it can shock someone, cause a fire or damage your equipment or circuit.
• Overloads happen when you have too many things running on the same circuit. Let’s say you have a 15-amp circuit serving your upstairs bedroom and hallway. This circuit normally handles anything you plug into the wall receptacles such as lamps, televisions, gaming consoles and the occasional vacuum cleaner. If you get chilly one winter and plug in a space heater, which alone eats up 12.5 amps of the 15-amp circuit, the circuit can easily become overloaded and trip the breaker.
• Ground faults are a type of short circuit, but they’re caused by a hot wire coming into contact with a part of the circuit that’s not supposed to be energized, like an appliance housing. Like other short circuits, ground faults generate very high currents, and because they energize things you could come into contact with, circuit breakers must be able to de-energize the circuit immediately.

Why Didn’t My Circuit Breaker Trip?

It could be a few things, from simple to complicated. Usually, restoring power to a not-working receptacle is as easy as finding the right breaker and flipping it back to “on.” But what if you go to your electrical panel and everything looks fine? Here are a few reasons.

“Hidden” GFCI receptacle

A friend of mine called me once to say the receptacle in her bathroom stopped working. The breaker hadn’t tripped, so she wasn’t sure what to do.

I asked her to find the GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter), which is a safety device that monitors a circuit for electrical imbalances. You’ll know a GFCI receptacle by its square face and two buttons, “test” and “reset.” She said the bathroom didn’t have one, but because the National Electrical Code (NEC) requires ground fault protection in bathrooms, I knew there had to be one somewhere.

The GFCI wasn’t in the bathroom, and it wasn’t in her electrical panel (GFCI protection can be provided by circuit breakers, too). So where was it? Right up the stairs, in another bathroom. One click of the reset button and she was back in business.

Half-hot outlet

Most wall outlets in your home will have two individual receptacles for plugging stuff in. This configuration is called a “duplex” receptacle, and even though it’s sold and installed as one unit, you can wire the two receptacles separately. One common way is to make it “half-hot,” where one of the receptacles always has power and the other only gets energized when you flip a wall switch.

This comes in handy when you want to control a lamp with a switch on the wall instead of walking over to it and turning it on. If it’s your lamp and your home you probably know which receptacles are controlled by a switch, but if you move into a new place, or renovate, rearrange rooms, or just plain forget that you used to have a floor lamp, you might not realize why half the outlet is dead.

Loose or faulty wiring

The circuit breaker should trip if, say, a wire comes loose and touches the metal housing of your toaster. Or a squirrel gets into your attic and chomps through an electrical conductor (RIP, buddy). But what if an electrical conductor comes out of its termination, but doesn’t touch anything else? You’ll lose power, because the wire’s not making a connection, but the breaker might not trip.

If this is the case, you’ll have to do some poking around (carefully!) to figure it out.

How To Troubleshoot a Non-Working Outlet

When you lose power and the breaker didn’t trip, do a little sleuthing. You might find a very easy solution. Of course, if you ever need help or you aren’t comfortable working with electricity, call a pro.

Check the breaker

Okay okay, you’ve probably already done this, but just in case, look again. Sometimes breakers don’t appear tripped, even if they are. Electrical panels are very rarely labeled correctly, either, so check every breaker before moving on. A tripped breaker will have its handle in the middle, not to the left or right. If you know which breaker it is, cycle it off then on and check your outlet again.

Look for a GFCI

If your non-working receptacle is in the bathroom, kitchen, garage, basement or outside, look for a GFCI before you even bother with the breaker box. (The NEC requires GFCI protection in these and other areas where water could be present.) If you’re lucky, the GFCI is easy to find, but sometimes, like my friend’s situation, it might not be where you expect.

Garage GFCI receptacles could control the outside outlets, bathrooms can be wired together, and you never know what the last guy or gal did before you came on the scene. I once found a tripped GFCI behind a garage refrigerator — not exactly a convenient spot. Here’s a pro tip: GFCIs must be readily accessible, so make sure you put them where you can reach them.

Try the wall switch

To suss out a half-hot outlet, plug a lamp into the duplex receptacle in question. You’ll know it’s half hot if the lamp lights up in one receptacle but not the other. Leave the lamp plugged into the dead one and start flipping switches on the wall. Sometimes, electricians who install switched receptacles put them in “upside down,” aka with the grounding slot on top, so that’s another clue.

Check the connections

If you know which breaker controls the outlet, turn it off before proceeding. (You can always turn off the main to be extra careful.) Test for power with a non-contact voltage tester, multimeter or receptacle tester, and once you’re sure everything in the box is dead, examine the receptacle terminations and any splices within the box.

“Backstabbed” wires, or those pushed into the holes in the back of the device, are notorious for coming loose. Instead, wrap the conductors clockwise around the terminal screws and tighten. Check every receptacle that’s affected by the outage, then close up the boxes before turning the power back on.

If this process of elimination doesn’t work, it’s time to call an electrician.