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Power Out in Half the House? What It Means and What to Do
You flip on the kitchen light and nothing happens. The living room works. The bedroom does not. The neighbors have power. This is a partial outage, and it is one of the most common reasons people call our emergency electrician line. Here is what is usually going on.
Cause 1: A tripped breaker
Open the panel door and look for a breaker sitting in the middle position or slightly off from the others. Switch it fully off, then back on. If it holds, you had a momentary overload. If it trips again immediately, stop. Something on that circuit is shorted or damaged, and resetting it repeatedly is dangerous.
Cause 2: A tripped GFCI outlet
Bathroom, kitchen, garage and outdoor outlets are often chained off a single GFCI. If the outlets in those areas are dead, find the GFCI with the reset button and press it. This fixes a surprising number of "outages."
Cause 3: A lost leg of service
Homes receive two 120V legs from the utility. If one fails, roughly half your circuits go dead and 240V appliances like the dryer or AC act strangely. This can be a utility problem or a failed main breaker. Call us and the utility; do not run the AC or range until it is diagnosed.
Cause 4: An open neutral or failed connection
Loose connections at a device, junction box or the panel can cut power to everything downstream. This is also the cause of lights that get brighter in one room and dimmer in another, a serious symptom that needs same-day electrical repair.
What is safe to check yourself
- Reset breakers once. Not repeatedly.
- Press reset on GFCI outlets.
- Unplug space heaters, hair dryers and other high-draw devices.
- Smell for burning plastic and feel for warm cover plates.
When to call right away
Any burning smell, buzzing from the panel, scorched outlets or a breaker that will not stay reset is a call-now situation. We answer (888) 633-7804 24 hours a day and dispatch electricians across California, from Los Angeles and Long Beach to San Francisco and Bakersfield.