Faulty electrical socket

jessel · Mar 26, 2020

I have an electrical socket that hasn't worked since we moved into our unit (4 years ago). I finally decided to take a look and see what was going on.

The outlet has a very low voltage coming into it... about 4V according to my multi-meter. I tested the wires coming into the outlet box and I get the same readings - so it's not the outlet itself. There are two sets of neutral/hot wires connected to the outlet. They all give the same reading. I don't know where they go next - everything else in the room works as expected and there are no other improperly functioning outlets in the house. I've tried all the switches in the room and they don't have any effect on the outlet.

When I turn the breaker off, everything goes to 0. Other outlets on the same breaker work fine and give me 120V on my multi-meter.

Any ideas what the next trouble-shooting step would be?

Cheers,

Jesse

dogbob · Apr 6, 2020

Sure sounds like a bad connection. First step is turn off the breaker, open the box containing the dead outlet, and visually look at the wiring. If everything looks good, do the same inspection of each box on the same breaker (WITH BREAKER OFF), because the power to that box is probably daisy-chained from another box.

It's rare that a wire will break in the middle. It's more likely that it will be loose in a wire connector or loose under a screw. Sometimes, people use the push connectors in outlets. These are not as dependable as screw connectors.

Worst case scenario is that previous repairs drove a nail or screw through the middle of a long wire and broke it. That's very unlikely but also very hard to debug.