I just moved into a TH and started to replace the receptacles and switches.?

Question

Here is the problem. Please don't say get an electrician! The receptacle in the kitchen appears to be a middle-of-the-run receptacle. It has threee wires running to it, so there are 3 black, 3 white, and 3 ground. Only one of the black wires is hot. The ground wire, except for one, is pigtailed. When I tried to install the new recptacle I lost continuity. The front of the house does not have power. I tried wire nutting all the blacks and all the whites, but still have no power in the front of the house. What should/can I do?

Answer 1

Do you mean there are three NMB or "romex" cables going to it, so you have a total of 3 BLK, 3 WH, and 3 GR? Or just two romex and the third wire is the pigtail? Or, everything is in conduit? There are no tripped breakers? How many items are out when you say "the whole front of the house"? This must be an older kitchen, because kitchen circuits should not be shared with other parts of the house. Or, they shared a neutral and ran one circuit to the kitchen and one to the front of the house. In this case, you may have dropped the neutral.

Were all of the wires pigtailed before with just one wire going to the old receptacle? Pigtailing (just in case) is putting each of the colors all together and having one wire that was not a part of the original wires added to the group and used to connect the device. The "pigtail" should extend a minimum of 6" from the face of the box. Ganging wires on a device is not a good practice in that the devices are typically not rated for feed-through, and if you lose a device you could lose everything connected to it.

The one black wire that is hot should have a white and green associated with it, these should be the homerun back to the panel, or from a nearby plug. Can you identify the circuit by turning breakers on and off until the one wire with power has none?

When you find this breaker, leave it off and identify everything that is not working. Save this for later. Turn it back on.

Run an extension cord from a known good outlet NOT on this circuit. Make sure all of your wires are connected in the box you have been working in but leave the pigtails out (not touching anything or one another). Use a volt meter and check for power from the neutral to the hot and confirm 120 volts (give or take). If all is well, confirm voltage from the neutral in the extension cord to the hot and from the neutral in the box to the extension cord hot, all good?

Move to first dead outlet. Check from the extension cord neutral to the dead outlet's hot and from the dead outlet's neutral to the extension cord hot. At this point you will find out if you have an open hot or an open neutral. You need to let us know where this gets you, or there are too many scenarios to cover. You could call me and I will walk you through tracing it out. If you want a call, send me an email.

Answer 2

The receptacle in the kitchen probably is a middle run. One black wire is hot and it has a white mate. the other two runs (matching white and black) probably go to your garbage disposer receptacle (under the sink) and the receptacle on the other side of the sink. (Just a guess, but it appears the installing electrician used that outlet box as a junction box also.) I'm assuming your installing a GFCI with your upgrade. Good luck and don't call an electrician until you've exhausted all your patience.

Answer 3

If you had power past the recept you're currently working on before you took it apart, and now there's no power past it even with all the white to white, black to black wires attached to each other, then you have to have blown a fuse or tripped a breaker somewhere. Have no idea how old this town house it, but if you felt it necessary to have to replace all the switches and recepts, it must be pretty old.
We had a similar problem in a house wiring project a few weeks ago, and after about 2 hours of hunting, tracing wires, we found a small 4 gang fuse panel in a remote corner of the attic. Guess what, one of the fuses was blown, replaced fuse, all OK. You may have a hunt on your hands. Apparently in the centuries past, electricians sometimes put fuse blocks in wherever they thought they would be safe from prying hands, not necessarily handy. Once you get power back, if you have room in the box, insert a free piece of wire, into the wire nut for each color and use that as the connection to the recept. Saves a lot of hassle trying to get all hooked up to the side terminals.

Answer 4

Get an electrician!

Just kidding, although this is a stumper. First the painfully obvious: is anything shorting and causing the breaker to trip?

Try going back to square one: Reinstall the old receptacle and see if that solves the problem. If so, perhaps your new receptacle is faulty (or you can just check for continuity in the new receptacle).

Were the two sockets on the old receptacle isolated from each other by having the connecting tabs broken out? If so, try doing that with the new receptacle as well.

That's all I've got for you for now.

Answer 5

In situations as such, there are seemingly infinite possibilities of problems, and faults, but lets try for the simplest. Make sure you haven't tripped any breakers. Then, try to connect only 2 of the sets to their corresponding wires at a time, and then checking to see if you have power restored back to the front of the house? You mentioned that you have 3 sets, but you didn't mention if they were in the same conduit, 2 sharing the same conduit, and one alone, or all three in a conduit each. The importance that has is the routing. That way you can see, or figure out, which set feeds the front of the house. Also, you might want to check the difference in the outlets that you're replacing from the ones you're replacing them with; make sure you just haven't disconnected a GFI, also known as a GFCI, (ground fault interruptor/ground fault circuit interruptor) outlet from it's protected feed (in which case all you'd have to do is make your proper connections to it, and reset it after installation). You might also want to invest in a hot/cold circuit tracer to help you in finding out which way the circuits run, and to which breakers they correspond to.
I hope I helped out a lil.

Answer 6

ok some idiot wired the house thruough that outlet...and didnt use a junction box they used the outlet terminals as a splice..
just tie all blacks together...same with whites....and same with grounds...forget about the outlet for now and see if others work...
you may also have broken a wire somewhere during your "repair"......if that does work then run ONE wire from the outlet to the group of 3 tied together...and do that for each color...
if that didnt help then you do have abroken wire and need to take each group apart and check each wire one at a time

Answer 7

i hate to say it but it sounds like your going to be cutting some holes and doing some fishing.it sounds like your circuit is overloaded and your one hot wire is feeding the rest of the circuit.have you checked your breaker to see if its tripped? is the receptical a gfi?if so check to make sure it isn't tripped. and last i would check your common(white)wires ,because your common carry's the unbalanced load i would check to see if it or they have a break anywhere. no doubt a task i wouldn't look foreward to dealing with but.....you could also try to wire nut all black(hot)wires together,all white..and grounds..pig tail one wire from each to your receptical so a complete circuit is being made if you haven't already and again if that doesn't work you have a break somewhere or a short. good luck

Answer 8

I'm no electrician, but did you replace it with the same type of outlet or just another one like your other ones? Check with the Home Depot guys if you don't get an expert answer here.