G.F.C.I.

If you are a homeowner … and you have suddenly found electrical outlets in a kitchen or bath not working, you have probably dealt with Ground Fault Interrupters (GFCI), those clever little circuit breakers that open the circuit to prevent overheating of wiring or electrocution of people in places where electrical shock to humans is likely. Yesterday, while my wife Muri was drying her hair in our bathroom, her dryer suddenly stopped working. The outlets in the upstairs guest bathroom, the downstairs powder room and the laundry also were dead. As a 40-something year homeowner, I knew I needed to find the outlet with the reset button to turn the power on but I checked every outlet I could find without success.   Surely, I thought, the trusty internet will show me a way to track down an illusive GFCI outlet.   However, other than offering some suggestions as to the unlikely places where it might be located (the garage … outside … the other end of the house), the advice amounted to, Keep looking.  Good luck.  Two days later, we still had no power in our bathrooms and my usually patient wife, Muri, was getting tired of drying her hair in the dining room.

My son, Aaron, suggested that the missing outlet might be behind one of the two wall cabinets in the garage, one which was put up by the previous owner and one that was put in by my son under my direction.   Certainly, I would never have cabinets put in front of an outlet but several interesting upgrades by the previous owner suggested it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for him.  Then I had a brainstorm.  I asked the neighbor across the street who has the same floor plan if he knew where the GCFI outlets was.   He pointed to a spot on his garage wall behind a large pile of boxes … corresponding to a spot behind the cabinets my son and I had installed.  Shit.  Sure enough, when we looked behind with a flashlight, there it was, close enough to see but too far to reach.   I can’t believe I put the cabinet there without cutting an access hole, my son said.   So we looked … and he had.  Yay!

So, Muri is back to drying her hair in the bathroom and Aaron is feeling like a hero.  Me?  I’m using the incident to feed my poor hungry blog.  Have a great Sunday.

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Tags: feeling older, home repairs, humor

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