Non spa electrical question

[orlandoguy]

It seems there are some very knowlegeable electrical people on the board, so before I paid an electrician, i thought I would try to mooch some advice here.

I ran a bunch of Christmas lights and plugged them in an outside yard spike with outlets.  Apparantly i blew a breaker as they all went out and all my outlets outside, including the back patio are dead except the spa, thankfully which is on it's own 220 box.

I searched the breaker box in the garage and all the switches are good from what i can tell and none seem to be dedicated to outside outlets and everything else works, including the house lights.

Is there somewhere I might be missing?  The outside breaker box only has 6 switches which are for the spa, A/C and other stuff, also working fine.

Thank you for any input.

[spaman--]

Some times the outside outlets are attatched to your gfci outlets in your bathrooms and or kitchen make certain they are all reset. If this is not the case check all of your outside outlets for reset buttons by law they have to be gfci protected so there's a gfci tripped somewhere. Good luck!
Since typically they are all on the same circuit only one gfci is necessary.\

[Tman122]

Yep in your bathroom the GFCI is tripped on the outlet by the sink,

[orlandoguy]

Dear Spaman and Tman,

You guys were right on the money.  It was actually the reset switch on one of the outlets in the garage, near the breaker box.  I spent an hour trying to figure out which switch in the breaker box to trip and was getting frustrated.  After reading your suggestions, I found the problem in 5 minutes.

Getting an electrician to come out for such a small job would have been challenging and it would have been doubtful I could have done it for the price I got here.  One more example of how great this site is.

Hopefully I can give back one day for all I have gained here, but in the meantime, hopefully knowing Rudolph's red nose will be lit tonight on the roof along with two little girl's hearts who love their Chritmas lights as much as Daddy loves his spa will show our gratitude.  I also learned that the really DO mean it when they say not to string too many lights together.

If you guys are passing though Orlando and would like a cold Sangria and a soak, we'll leave the lights on!

[spaman--]

Orlando,

Glad to help and actually I get to orlando atleast twice a year my father-enlaw lives in Lakeland and my kids have to go to the mouse house atleast once a year, I myself prefer to go to waterworld and go canoeing down the Franklin? river. But I am always up for a cold one at the resturaunt with all the race cars and bigfoot!

[Brewman]

Hopefully any electrician you called would have suggested you try your GFI outlets before they came out to your place.  This type of thing is pretty common.
Anytime you lose power to any outdoor outlets, or any outlets in unfinished basement space or possibly gargage and kitchen- depending on when the structure was built these are all subject to gfi protection.  

[keating]

Anytime you lose power to any outdoor outlets, or any outlets in unfinished basement space or possibly gargage and kitchen- depending on when the structure was built these are all subject to gfi protection.  

Yep, in most places, by code, the outdoor outlets must be GFCI protected, either by a GFCI breaker, or a GFCI outlet......sometimes GFCI outlets will be daisy chained....so you'll have a standard breaker, feeding one GFCI outlet, then several regular non-GFCI outlets after that frist one.

National Electric Code in Canada says that outdoor outlets/lights may not be on same circuit with any interior lights/outlets, and i'd imagine the US is similar, so I doubt anything outside would trip the GFCI in your bathroom.

[Brewman]

Our first home, built in 1989, had the outdoor outlets tied into the bathroom GFI.  The electrician who put the outlets on the back of the house didn't put them inside a weatherproof cover, and if it rained hard enough from a certain direction, the bathroom power snapped off.  
Took me a couple hours of frustration to trace that problem.  Our current home, built in 2000, not sure if the outside GFI's are tied to the bathroom or not.  I could easily find out- you got me curious.