My parents don't think things through when they mess with things. I told them to pick up a new chain switch to go into the Ceiling Fan light. They picked up a 3 wire switch and the one for the light is 2 wire.
Instead of taking it back and getting the 2 wire they wired up all 3 wires. And my dad is NOT good with figuring stuff out for electronics.
Needless to say, he wired it up incorrectly, When they hit the switch, the light switch immediately started glowing and threw the breaker.
they had to replace the switch in the wall and they put the correct chain switch in the fan.
The switch in the wall has 2 switches. 1 for the fan/light and another for the porch light. Both on the same breaker obviously.
Well the porch light still works but all the rest of the outlets that are on that same breaker do not work. So there's no juice to the computer room and my parents room, but the Porch light still works.
Is it possible to only damage part of the breaker switch and cause something like that? or do I need to go check all of the outlets and see if more of them fried?


BTW. They never even shut the breaker off while doing the work, they only turned off the switch.
I was at work.

 

It was only kinda funny til I read the ending about only turning off the switch, not the breaker

 

i would check the outlets. i dont see how the breaker could just partially tweek. im no electrician but we are getting our new shop wired up and i sure have learned a lot

btw that is a little funny hehe

 

Im not an electrician but I have done some wiring. It sounds to me like a shorted out wire...must be a main lead to that particular outlet. However thats no guarantee, like I said im not an electrician. Doesnt sound like it will be fun either way

 

That's what I'm afraid of, I would prefer it to be an outlet some where. It just boggles me that the 1 damn switch works, and everything else is dead.

I need to establish a rule that no one can do maintenance on anything electrical in this house without me present.
I'm no electrician either, but I do have a fully functioning brain that would have prevented this from happening.

 

i am an electrician and the first thing you should do is pull both switches out of the box, get a ticker (a pen type light that lights when a magnetic field is detected). you will have to screws on each switch and when the switch is off only one of them should be hot or energized, flip the switch and it will make the other side of the switch hot! doing this will justify if you have power at least to the switch! let me know from here

 

it is okay to work on the fan/light with the switched turned off, it is a good role of thumb to shut the breaker off when working on everything but in a quick situation the switch is do-able

 

IF you are absolutely correct about the outside light being on the smae breaker, basically you need to forward track the porch feed. It has to be the beginning if it is the only thing working on that circuit. Find the last receptacle that is working (if there are any), pull it out and make sure it's all together. Then the next. They are "stab lock" style and the old stab locks are almost worthless. A good jolt of power going through could be all that is needed to break the weak connection.

Also, those receptacles could be fed through the ceiling box (or switch box, depending on where it goes through at), make sure the feed was not mistakenly not hooked up. A short can also blow out shitty wire nut connections.

No, it's not possible to have a breaker half working and only feeding some of the stuff and not the rest. If you have one thing working you can usually find the problem quickly. If you have multiple items working then it just takes a moment to find the end of the "working" items.

 

If you a have a ticker like sepenia4 points out..you'll save a lot of time.

 

im surprised your dad is still alive..