WHat's wrong with my apt electrical wiring?

[Gibson486]

Plug one thing in living room outlet...

Whole bedroom loses power.

Does not matter what it is....even an extension cord with no load will do it.

Nothing trips in circuit breaker and outlet powers whatever is being plugged in.

 

[Modelworks]

The bedroom is probably connected to the outlet in the living room.
I lived in an apt before that had an entire wall quit working.
Was loose wiring in a outlet in the next room over.

 

[AlienCraft]

#1. Replace outlet and tidy up wiring within box.
#2. profit

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The bedroom is probably connected to the outlet in the living room.
I lived in an apt before that had an entire wall quit working.
Was loose wiring in a outlet in the next room over.

When I lived in Boston, we always had the cb trip. When I first moved in, I had no idea where teh breaker was, so maintanance had to come everytime to switch the breaker back. We had this outlet that always worked when the rest of the apartment had no power. We decided to plug the air conditioner in there since that outlet never tripped. two months later, I over head the people downstairs fighting with each other on how they let the electricity bill get so high. Good times....


But are the outlets usually wired in series? I am not really sure that outlet is really connected to the bedroom...but I guess I can double check.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: AlienCraft
#1. Replace outlet and tidy up wiring within box.
#2. profit

Should I do this myself? Or should I ask HOA / maintanace to do it. I have chnaged outlet before and some of those wires are a pain to take out of the outlet.

 

[Tiamat]

that sucks. Poor wiring scheme. Ask your landlord if he can fix it.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Gibson486

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The bedroom is probably connected to the outlet in the living room.
I lived in an apt before that had an entire wall quit working.
Was loose wiring in a outlet in the next room over.

When I lived in Boston, we always had the cb trip. When I first moved in, I had no idea where teh breaker was, so maintanance had to come everytime to switch the breaker back. We had this outlet that always worked when the rest of the apartment had no power. We decided to plug the air conditioner in there since that outlet never tripped. two months later, I over head the people downstairs fighting with each other on how they let the electricity bill get so high. Good times....


But are the outlets usually wired in series? I am not really sure that outlet is really connected to the bedroom...but I guess I can double check.

They are not wired in series.
But you have 2 screws on each side of an outlet with one set going to the next outlet.
In my case the wire was loose on the bottom screw going to the next outlet so if you plugged something in it would cause the connection to make/break for the next room.

If you rent, get them to fix it.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Something is bridged.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: Gibson486

Originally posted by: AlienCraft
#1. Replace outlet and tidy up wiring within box.
#2. profit

Should I do this myself? Or should I ask HOA / maintanace to do it. I have chnaged outlet before and some of those wires are a pain to take out of the outlet.

I would get them to do it, because, if the wires break from fatigue, or are just too short to begin with, extending them is a good job for the "experts", because that's why they get the big money.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: SphinxnihpS
Something is bridged.

It's very common to use the same branch circuit to feed different rooms with a common wall. In this case, the "PUSH FIT TERMINALS" have probably failed, and the flexing of the body of the outlet is causing the connection to fail. That connection is simply the edge of a strip of metal, friction contacting the wire conductor. Any loss of shell integrity can affect contact performance.