Solve Home Electrical Problems Yourself!

• Electrical outlets not working or ...
• An outage from a circuit breaker tripping or ...
• Several lights that blink strangely or ...
• Receptacles dead because a tripping GFCI won't reset...
• Or three-way switches having trouble?

-th visitor since April 2005, welcome! What if this site ever becomes unavailable? Or what if your computer circuit is a victim of your next little outage? You'll be glad to know that all this electrical advice is now available as a book (or download) called Circuit Down. Give yourself, or a DIY-er you know, the gift of Detective Larry's experience and his 35 diagrams and charts. Available online from Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Tip of the Day: Congress says that by 2014 normal 40-100 watt incandescent light bulbs must no longer be made (to encourage the more efficient fluorescent bulbs). Remember when your dimmer switches were promoted as saving energy? Guess what? Those dimmers are not able to get along with most fluorescent bulbs! You may be going back to regular on-off switches. - Detective Larry     ...More Tips of the Day.

The Scope of This Website: These pages have been designed for the U.S. or Canadian DIY homeowner who faces home electrical problems, that is, electric malfunction issues in his/her household electrical wiring system. The site is not oriented to helping with design, installation, or with remodel projects. [More geared to these are such sites as this well-written one and electrical-online; but I would avoid ehow.com as unreliable based on this page, where for three years they have been advising wrong and dangerous ways to test outlets.] Some books are better at wiring projects than most websites.
The concept is Home Electrical Troubleshooting:
1. "Home" includes any residence: a house, condominium, apartment, or mobile home.
2. "Electrical" - meaning the alternating-current house wiring system, from power company equipment, through circuit breakers or fuses, to plug-in outlets, electrical switches, and some of the appliances and fixtures operated by this current.
3. "Troubleshooting" here means the process of investigating and fixing home electrical problems; the site is not concerned with upgrading or preventive maintenance, except as these activities may result in a new problem.

Some who need to find this site's material may be searching with terms found in this statement: "When I replaced a toggle two way switch with a rocker tree way switch, the GFI breaker switch wall socket popped off. I guess I need help to trouble shoot my house hold electricity. Cant a GFCI circuit or GFI switch handle a 3 way circuit? I don't want any wall outlets to go bad or get dim from a bad breaker. I want a free electrical advice website and to learn home electrical repair."

Navigation:    Besides using the sidebars, these may help:

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