Pat wrote:
Am I the only one confused by this?

You said the 3 outlets were "dead" but you tested them and they tester
said they were reversed? Are they hot or not? Something like a simple
lamp should work okay (but not be safe, but at least work) with the
wires reversed. Something with protections circuitry might not.

If it's exactly as described and you plugged in a lamp, it would not
work. A lamp is a two prong plug. One outlet has no neutral, so we
that would not light the lamp. The other two have the hot and GROUND
reversed. If that's true, the lamp would be connected between ground
and neutral, which isn't going to light it either.

I agree with the others, that it's likely something simple has come
undone and the tester, which could also be of dubious integrity, is
just giving wierd readings.





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?