If you experience electrical problems in your rental, like flickering lights, dead outlets, or frequently tripping circuit breakers, you might be curious about solutions.
While it’s crucial to prioritize safety and think about hiring a licensed electrician for major problems, you can try some troubleshooting for common electrical issues. Taking steps like checking for tripped circuit breakers, testing outlets, and inspecting light fixtures can help you understand the problem and decide what to do next.
Visual Inspection
If an appliance, lamp, or electrical device stops functioning, initially inspect the outlet and cord for any signs of damage. Now and then, a power outlet may fail and go dead. Damage might be visible, such as discoloration. Similarly, look over all plugs and cords for breaks, fraying, and other damage. When the outlet or cord shows damage, it’s probably time to replace them.
Try a Different Outlet
If your outlet and power cord appear undamaged, the next step is to try your lamp or device in another outlet. It’s important to find out if the outlet or the electrical item is the source of the issue. If you try your device in another outlet (ideally in a different room) and it works, the outlet is the main issue.
Reset the GFCI
One frequent cause of an outlet ceasing to work is its connection to a GFCI outlet that has tripped. The majority of outlets come with a reset button. If you can’t find it, another outlet in the circuit will have the reset button.
The reset button for the entire circuit is on a GFCI outlet, commonly located in bathrooms or kitchens but sometimes in less obvious places like garages or laundry rooms. It might take some searching, but once found, resetting a GFCI outlet is a simple fix for a dead outlet.
Check the Breaker Panel
Occasionally, the problem lies not with the outlets but with a bad circuit breaker. Frequently, you can spot the faulty breaker by looking at your home’s electrical panel. Numerous breaker boxes are clearly labeled to show which circuits serve which areas of the house. In such cases, flipping the breaker off and then on again can often resolve the problem. In other instances, the breaker might be defective or have a loose connection. If this is the situation, the breaker must be replaced.
Call Your Landlord
Regardless of the electrical issue, be sure to inform your landlord about the problem and the troubleshooting steps you’ve taken. Frequent occurrences of these issues may indicate more serious electrical problems.
When troubleshooting doesn’t fix the non-working outlets, your landlord must call a professional electrician. In any case, clear communication with your Hawthorne property manager is the key to quickly resolving electrical problems.
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Originally published: April 2, 2021
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