John Grabowski wrote:

"Aaron Fude" wrote in message
...
Hi,

One of the circuit in my house has all of a sudden died. It happened
when I was trying to plug in a (working) device in the outlet, and
something in the outlet popped with a bright spark. Now the circuit is
down, except when I use a voltage detector it beeps and when I use a
meter it shows a voltage of 3V. I don't think it's the circuit breaker
because I swapped it out and it didn't affect anything. What could
this be?

Many thanks in advance!


Open up that outlet and see what is going on. Maybe a loose connection.
No, replace that outlet with a new one. Visible arcing is enough
evidence to never trust the outlet again. Outlets are cheap, and no
point opening it up twice.

My Blue-Sky hunch- the outlet is worn out, and something arced
internally, or outlet was loose in box, and the hot screw got too close
to the grounded box. As to the three volts- was that a modern cheapo
electronic detector and VOM, perchance? It can pick phantom voltages
real easy. Does the new breaker trip immediately when switched on? Are
other outlets in the string, especially further downstream, still hot?
If breaker trips, it is a short, if upstream outlets are still hot, it
is an open connection. If there is a GFCI on the circuit, reset it.
(Those can trip without tripping breaker.) Even if you don't think there
is one on the string, just go reset every GFCI in the house- sometimes
electricians run strings in bizarre ways for reasons that made sense to
them, but are not obvious years later. (My outside deck outlet is hung
off a bathroom GFCI 40 feet away...)

But I'm not a qualified electrician, so what do I know? The Real
Electricians of the group will be along shortly.

aem sends...