Electricity help, urgent!!!

Ok you can hook up GFCI's so that the first one will protect the rest in the circuit. This is extremely common as it saves you money by not having to buy all GFCI's. If an electrician used a GFCI for every outlet in a circuit, I would call him a shady electrican. But on to the problem....

You said the tv in the house is on the same circuit but remains on. So is the garage wired from just this one circuit? Which breaker are you flipping? Is it the main? If its gone out in the past and flipping the breaker does nothing then it is unfortunatley probably something more major. Nothing should be shorted because that is what trips a breaker, excessive current, and you already said its not tripped cause you tried reseting it. So what you likely have is an open, a wire disconnected or burnt apart somewhere. Do you havea multi-meter? One would be extremly usefull right now. There pretty cheap. You could use it to test if you have voltage at the outlets in the garage then work you way back.

i'm no electrician... but i'm not crazy

Defantly how it is wired. The way mine is wired the same circuit feed a couple of plugs. here's some pictures for what I am trying to say. The one wire feed the plug power. The second wire is wired from that plug to the next plug. Now if the GFI in the picture trips. It also kills power to the next plug which in turn kills power to everything after that plug. Now if you look at the second picture I know it might be tough to see. There's 2 black wires. They both are inserted into holes. I hate that way. i alwayed screwed the wires in. I never use those holes. But anyways. There's 3 holes on this plug. i am assuming that one hole is the feed, the next 2 are to wire another plug to. One would be killed by the GFI and the other won't sence it is right next to the feed one. i am going to try and see what happens. I wouldn't have wirted it like this, but thats how they did. I would have wired it so only one GFI tripped at a time, not all. I think thats what that thrid hole ios for. It connects that next plug to the feed wire So this doesn't happen.

Yep actually just looked closly. That bottom picture the top black wire. There's 2 holes there. There's also writing that say HOT wire all active. So I put the bottom black wire(in the picture it's the bottom one) into the second top hole. I tripped the GFI and all stayed on now. I'm gonna check the rest now and see what they are wired like.

One of those black wires comes from the source and the other one goes to the next outlet, same thing with the white wires. The top and bottom holes should be labeled line and load or something similar. Got to make sure that the line wires actually go to line and the load ones go to the load. The GFCI monitors how much current is coming IN the through the BLACK wires and checks it against how much is going OUT on the WHITE wires. When it sees a difference its trips, as this means that current is being lost somewhere, possibly through a person.

There may be a third hole like your talking to wire the next outlets off of so there not GFCI protected, can't see the picture too well. Another way is to simply pig tail off of the wires coming from the source.

Yeah I moved the white wire as well cause there is a second hole for that white wire right next to the top white wire(in the picture it's the top wire). Those holes are also labled. So both those holes for black and white are labeled as such so they are the line in side of the plug. So that next plug is hooked to the line directly so it doesn't get killed when the GFI trips. I just tested it all out. I fixed all 3 GFI's and now they only trip themself with out killing the whole ciurcuit.


But anyways. i think we highjacked this thread enough. a GFI plug can and will trip a whole circuit if thats how it is wired. I just fixed it on mine so it doesn't do that now.

I think the orignal poster should start tracing out that circuit. See what works and what doesn't. It could be a GFI problem, but from the sounds of it, it sounds like it over loaded and broke the circuit somewhere. Is the garage attached or is it detached? If it's detached how does power get out there? Is it under ground or above? I would trace that ciruit out and see what works and what doesn't. In the mean time run some extention cords out there for your lights and stuff. If you don't have a meter get one. You can get a cheap one if you want. I use a Fluke 87III. Pretty pricy, but most of my job was electircal(probably 90% of it). So I do have a good understanding of how this stuff works.

autotek500: I was just trying to help, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings and bewilder you with my post. And just for the record no, not every outlet has a GFCI.

no harm no foul dude, but a lot of the newer homes do, that being said they should be wired like I posted earlier to where they function independently....even if there is only one gfi per room it can be wired this way.....this causes less problems....Oh just for the record it's hard to bewilder me ...lol...

werd. Hopefully his issue is resolved. Electrical issues suck.