My wife turned on the wall switch and the pendant light over our dining room table went out. The fuse outside didn’t blow—none of them needed to be reset. I checked for power in the light’s hanging cord, but nothing. I pulled the wall switch to check for power and nothing there either. Thoughts?
Start looking for tripped GFCI outlets.
If there is no power to the switch and the breaker didn’t trip there is likely a switch with GFCI on the mix.
Another possibility could be a bad breaker (assuming you don’t have actual fuses), check this by flipping the breaker off and back on. This could also help to identify other lights/outlets on the circuit. If there is a wiring problem, knowing what other devices are on the circuit could help you track the problem.
While not impossible, it is unlikely that a wire has been severed. It is possible that a wire came loose at another outlet or fixture in the circuit.
If there was a true short, the breaker would be tripped out fuse blown and it would continue to trip.
Problem exists between breaker and wall switch.
I always encourage people to do an audit of what is on every breaker when they get a new home (and make notes). It takes a little while, but when something like this happens, you know exactly where to look. It’s harder to diagnose if you don’t know what breaker the fixture is on.
Agree on the GFCI advice. I had that happen - the GFCI outside tripped and took out half of the lights in my kitchen. Whoever wired them put them electrically downstream of the GFCI. Took me days to figure out what was going on, because it didn’t occur to me that the outside GFCI would be protecting my kitchen lights. And I wasn’t trying to use the outside outlet for anything, so I didn’t notice it was out.
Took me days to figure out what was going on, because it didn’t occur to me that the outside GFCI would be protecting my kitchen lights.
I hate that. Some genius was either too cheap or too lazy to wire it correctly and just tied it into an unrelated circuit.
That is the only thing that makes sense. I may have to just check EVERY GFCI in the whole house. I wouldn’t put it past the builder to do something crazy with the wiring….
By “fuse” do you mean “circuit breaker?” What do you mean by checked for power, are you saying you put a multimeter on the light’s cord and the light switch, with the circuit energized, and aren’t getting any signs of electricity?
Yeah. Crazy, right?
Since you said you aren’t getting power to the bulb at all with the switch on. I would start by killing power via the circuit breaker, unscrewing the cover of the switch and checking the continuity between the two powered terminals on the switch using a multi-meter. It should read continuous when on, not when off.
If that test passes, check for GFCI outlets on the same circuit, see if any of them are tripped. A GFCI outlet, when properly wired, will protect an entire circuit and cut power to it.
Ah, thought the GFCI was it! but the three outlets anywhere near the light seem engaged.
Circuit breaker is all good, flipped anything near the dining room off and on. Nada.
Not getting any power through the wall switch wires using my voltage detector.
Use a multimeter instead of a voltage detector. Those things are ok for a quick check but can be very unreliable.
Is it possbile that the light is on a three way switch and the other switch is off someplace else? Also, are you sure the light is on the same circuit as the outlets? Do you know where the light switch feed comes from?
I was using the voltage detector just to see if ANY wire was live in the switch. Which none were. I’ll try the multimeter.
AFAIK the switch is one-way. The circuit breaker has it labeled, “Dining Room/HallCloset.” The hall closet only has two functioning light switches—inside closet light and outside hall light—and there’s an outlet in closet, too, which is functional.
Ever figure out what this was?
Nope, I’ve called an electrician to sort it. Also have a switch upstairs that does nothing. Gonna have him go all detective on that, too.
Those are the frustrating issues.
When we first moved to this house (different than the one I mentioned elsewhere in the comments), I had a breaker that would seemingly randomly trip, knocking out power for some lights in the basement and a pond in the back yard. A year or two later we removed the drop ceiling in the basement and discovered a wire that was not properly secured into a metal box…it had moved enough over time that it had worn through the insulation and the hot wire was occasionally touching the metal box, causing the trip. Sigh. Hopefully it’s not a situation like that!
Is there more than 1 bulb? If it is 1 bulb, did the light bulb burn out and need to be replaced?
You’d still have power at the switch and line powering the light.
