On 2 Dec 2006 16:15:10 -0800, "Jeffrey"
wrote:

Hello everyone. Just had a quick question. Our house is only 2 years
old and up until a couple motnhs ago everything seemed to work fine as
far as electricity is concerned. Mysteriously, in our bedroom, 3
sockets stopped working. It was not a breaker, nor a GFCI, etc....Just
these three. Over at home depot I picked up a little tester with the 3
lights that tells what is wrong supposedly. In two of the 3 I got
Hot/Ground Reverse and in one I got Open Neutral. So, in my thinking I
could just open up the sockets and switch the hot ground on the 2 and
then connect the presumed detached neutral on the other. But there has
got to be a reason this happened on 3 at the same time. Is there anyone
out there who can point me in the right direction?

Be careful with the testers with the 3 neon bulbs. They sometimes give
out false readings. My guess is you have just an open neutral and not
a hot-ground reversal. With the neutral open, I bet you're seeing
leakage over to the ground within the tester and hence lighting of the
ground neon bulb too, making it seem like a reversed hot-ground.

If the outlets are daisy changed, the lost neutral will be on the
first outlet in the chain.


dickm