Shut Up Legs
Down Under Member
I knew the house I've been renting for the last 5.5 years was a typical DIY job: various things about it are odd and unusual. Unfortunately the electrical fittings appear to be one of these.
A few years ago, I had to get my rental agent to get an electrician to fix a power point in the laundry, because I had a front-loader washing machine and front-loader spin-dryer plugged into it, and they were frequently stopping, and had to be restarted by me re-inserting the power cables into the power point. Once it was fixed (the electrician replaced the single power point with a double, which now works fine), I thought I'd seen the last of these problems.
Last night, however, while I was eating dinner and watching a DVD, the TV, DVD player, sofa-side lamp, and even my desktop PC all turned off, accompanied by a loud POP, and I was left sitting there in the dark thinking a general power failure had occurred. But then I noticed a few things (e.g. one of my 2 PC display monitors) showing standby lights, and realised that only some of the power points had failed.
I have a combined kitchen / living room area (as I said, a DIY job), which has 5 double power points and 3 single power points: ALL the double power points had failed. I tested them all, and get nothing from them now.
I managed to work around it by running an extension cable from the fridge / freezer (which was connected to one of the failed double power points) to one of the working single power points, and similarly for the TV / etc. I rearranged the desktop PC cables to use 1 of its 2 power boards which still worked, and it booted up properly.
One of my power boards got fried, so this morning while shopping I bought 2 more, plus another extension cable. I also emailed my rental agent with the details of the problem, and will phone him tomorrow to follow-up.
Does anyone have any idea how complex these things are to fix? It seems that the 5 double power points must have been all connected, so they all failed together. Is this a major electrical maintenance job, requiring lots of time and money?
Regards,
--- Victor ( "I'm a software geek, not a hardware geek, dammit!" )
A few years ago, I had to get my rental agent to get an electrician to fix a power point in the laundry, because I had a front-loader washing machine and front-loader spin-dryer plugged into it, and they were frequently stopping, and had to be restarted by me re-inserting the power cables into the power point. Once it was fixed (the electrician replaced the single power point with a double, which now works fine), I thought I'd seen the last of these problems.
Last night, however, while I was eating dinner and watching a DVD, the TV, DVD player, sofa-side lamp, and even my desktop PC all turned off, accompanied by a loud POP, and I was left sitting there in the dark thinking a general power failure had occurred. But then I noticed a few things (e.g. one of my 2 PC display monitors) showing standby lights, and realised that only some of the power points had failed.
I have a combined kitchen / living room area (as I said, a DIY job), which has 5 double power points and 3 single power points: ALL the double power points had failed. I tested them all, and get nothing from them now.
I managed to work around it by running an extension cable from the fridge / freezer (which was connected to one of the failed double power points) to one of the working single power points, and similarly for the TV / etc. I rearranged the desktop PC cables to use 1 of its 2 power boards which still worked, and it booted up properly.
One of my power boards got fried, so this morning while shopping I bought 2 more, plus another extension cable. I also emailed my rental agent with the details of the problem, and will phone him tomorrow to follow-up.
Does anyone have any idea how complex these things are to fix? It seems that the 5 double power points must have been all connected, so they all failed together. Is this a major electrical maintenance job, requiring lots of time and money?
Regards,
--- Victor ( "I'm a software geek, not a hardware geek, dammit!" )