A Day In The Life - 10/22: The $60 Button

 As I mentioned a few posts back, we had a pretty good storm around here awhile back. It was a doozy. (Is that a word?) Anyway, about that same time the outlet in the bathroom went out. As you are probably aware, bathrooms, kitchens and outdoor electrical outlets must be on GFI (Ground Fault Interrupt) circuits. The photo to the left is the outlet from our bathroom. They both look just like this one. A GFI outlet has a button that you can push because they blow faster than a regular circuit breaker does to keep people from electrocuting themselves or others where water is present.
So I checked the circuit breaker. It was not thrown. I could not figure this out. Then a few days later I noticed that the lawn, garden and trees weren't getting watered. Again, I checked things out, swapped out the fuses in the control box but it was getting no power at all. I found that it was on the same circuit as the bathrooms.

I got out my volt meter and went hunting for the cause of this problem. but could not figure it out. When I was learning a bit about electricity, a GFI circuit had a GFI outlet with the reset button at every outlet. I figured that perhaps they now had internal circuits or fuses - something that did not require a reset button.
Finally I gave up and called an electrician. He came out and checked the same things that I did - circuit breaker, voltage behind the outlet, etc. Then we started looking for the GFI. We searched the garage. Nothing. Then up to the master bath. As seen above, nothing. Then I said, "As long as we are up here let's check the second bathroom." Sure enough, there it was (as seen to the left). What I found out was that now the cheaper way to do the GFI setup is to run the wires from the circuit breaker box to the closest GFI outlet, use a real GFI outlet there and then connect that outlet to all of the other GFI outlets but use regular outlets and only the one will pop the button and shut them all down.
Evidently, when we had the storm, water got into the outside outlet, which is under the porch, because it had a plug in it propping it open, and blew the GFI button. Well, live and learn and hope the learning doesn't cost you too much or is too painful.