Today I was called out to a house because the bathroom receptacles were not working. The client had a thick accent, if I had heard everything correctly, I would have told her how to solve the problem on the phone.
I got there and realized that when the house was built, all required GFI outlets outside the kitchen (bathroom, and outside) had been put in series with one GFI. These were tract houses done to the cheapest possible standards. I mean, they saved a total of $40 by doing it this way.
I proceeded to look for the GFI that had tripped and turned off the plugs in three bathrooms, and one plug outside. I looked, and I looked and I looked. I had done this in a similar place before, and we found the GFCI behind some boxes in the Garage.
After an hour and a half of looking, I was wondering what could be wrong here. I decided to ask a neighbor, which is what everyone probably should have done in the first place. The neighbor came in the garage and walked right up to it. It was behind a hanging shoe rack in the garage. Of course we should have found it, it seems like we looked everywhere else in the garage, but we were all relieved that we had found it. One push of the button on the face of the GFI and everything was working again, or for the first time since they had moved in.
I charged them the very minimum, mainly for the gas and time it took to get out there.
One of the most common troubleshooting jobs I get, and I'm sure with other electricians, is where the devices in the circuit are wired in series, and when when one device blows, all the others after it go out. I almost never wire anything in series. I can only think of doing it on a GFCI like this, but even then I only do it when the other devices are in the same room.
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