A couple weeks ago after a big storm came through, I found a circuit breaker had popped on the panel. Reset it and it did not fix the problem - the lights in the guest bathroom, laundry room, hallway, and garage were all non-functional, as were al the plugs on the other side of that wall including the printer, and cable modem. Much fun.
Happily, the fridge, washer, and dryer in the laundry room still worked as did the garage door itself.
Clearly beyond my limited capabilities, I moved the modem via an extension cord to a working plug, and I sought an electrician to further diagnose and fix the issue.
Sadly, finding an electrician willing to work was hard.
Finally found one and had an appointment set for last Thursday at 9:15 am, about a week after the outage, but it was the earliest I could get someone there.
So last Thursday 9:15 rolled around; then 10:15; then 11:15, and no call -- no show. I then called and got voicemail followed by a text message that he would call me right back.
As you might guess, no, no, he did not bother calling back at all.
Nor was there any response to my follow-up text asking if maybe he was too busy to come that day and if we could reschedule.
Then, since he clearly didn't want the work, I started looking for an alternate electrician. Hard to get people to want to work today I suppose. Got a name from another friend yesterday, called him today, and he came over this afternoon right after finishing another job.
He then started diagnosing it and traced the cause to the GFCI outlet in the garage.
There were three hot wires connected to the GFCI. One had gotten just loose enough to knock out that part of the circuit while leaving the rest of the circuit on the same breaker, including the Garage door working. Rather tricky.
So wires got stripped, re-connected, and re-wired, and as a precaution we installed a nice fresh GFCI there as the old one was looking kinda dodgy, and it all works now.
5 comments:
It is not that they don’t want the work. It is the fact that there is too much work. The trades are stretched to their limits, and beyond, because two generations were told that the only way to happiness was to go to college. So the men that might have gone into the trades (and were better suited for them) got nothing degrees and are now drones in the white collar world.
MC is correct.
Plus, the "Journeymen" and "apprentices" that once did the scut work while learning are no longer there. So the "actual" electrician has to pull wire, connect outlets and the other fairly mundane work that once was done by helpers.
Midwest Chick: Possibly, which accounts for why it took forever to find an electrician even willing to come out. But, it doesn't account for that electrician company not even showing up and not even responding to inquiries about not showing up.
B: Yep, true enough, but then the company shouldn't book an appointment to start then.
Agree with both MC and B... sigh
Aaron,
Got the exact same problem here, which started last night. No power in any of the water related areas, bath rooms and kitchen island with sink. First Electrician I called, one of my former students, his answering machine said he was 6 months out. Well, that's not much help! Called a different one. Somebody upstairs was smiling. He said he was about to leave on a job, happened to be near me and he'd stop by around noon if I'd be there. YES Sir! I'll be here!
Interesting coincidence.
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