We finally have power in all of our rooms again!
You may recall that 3 of our 4 bedrooms were on the same circuit (except for 1 power outlet in my room and 1 outlet in mom's room, which are on the circuit with the bathrooms instead), and that that circuit had been causing us problems for months. Back in November I had to flip the circuit breakers several times per day to get the power to come back on, and 4 weeks ago today it stopped coming on no matter what I did.
I called the electrician I know from Habitat 4 weeks ago today and sent him our address to see if he would work us into his schedule, but he never got back to us.
Yesterday evening the power went off to the bathrooms/two working bedroom outlets. It came back on when I flipped the circuit breaker, but I had to do so again in the middle of the night. I discovered that if we run two space heaters on that same circuit they have to be kept on low, as there is not enough current for them both to run on high.
I texted the same electrician again, but this time he got back to me after about an hour to say he could come this afternoon between 2 and 4pm. (He got here about 4:10pm, which is better than getting here between 2 and 3 pm as mom was really worried that he would interrupt her watching General Hospital.)
I pointed out all the various electrical issues we've had in this house, but he said that is too much to handle in one day. We had to focus on just the main reason we'd called, the power not working upstairs.
He took apart some outlets in my room first, and said that they are old enough that we should probably replace them within the next few years but that they are not the source of the current problem. He did not go up into the attic to look at the wired leading to each room. He just checked out the breaker box.
It did not take him long to determine that one of the breakers was completely blown and would certainly have to be replaced. It took him longer to decide if the other breakers nearby should also go. He didn't have enough replacement breakers in his truck to swap out all of them that were kind of iffy. There was a fair amount of corrosion in the connections behind the fuses. He scraped them off and applied an antioxidant to prevent it from getting much worse.
Unfortunately there was no extra space in the box and the replacement fuse could not handle all of the current. He ended up connecting it with the fuse for the other bedroom and the stairway light. All 4 bedrooms, the upstairs hallway, and the stair light are now on the same circuit.
He said that this is just a temporary fix, as we really ought to replace the whole fuse box before too long, but that this should hold us over for while.
He said that he did not have time to check on the issues with the outside lights today, and that there is no point trying to fix them before replacing the breaker box as doing so might fix the problem anyway. He seemed to believe that the problems with the power outlets in the den and living room were issues with the aging outlets themselves, rather than any wiring issue in the walls, and that the reason why vacuum cleaners and space heaters work there while televisions, computers, and internet routers do not likely comes down to the size and shape of the plugs.
He told us not to run any space heaters in the outlets on the 4 bedroom circuit, and that we really shouldn't be running space heaters at all except for short periods of time in small areas. He did not like dad's idea of relying entirely on space heaters and never turning on the central heating.
Before he left he showed me the proper way to start the pilot light in our furnace. It took a couple tries, but our central heat seems to be working fine now. At first I was concerned by the smell, worrying it could be a gas leak or something, but he said it is perfectly normal for a heater that has not been turned on in a couple years. (I don't think our heater has been used in at least a decade.)