Electrical Circuit

When renovating my existing bathroom, there was no electrical work required. We had power at the source and all the plugs and lights were working. When changing the GFI plug the outlet popped. My brother-in-law hit the reset button and we have absolutely NO power anywhere in the room at all. We checked the main breaker and it was fine. As a matter of fact, there is a plug inline from the breaker to my bathroom and it still has power. We have taken all electrical devices out of the room and have completed a continuity test so I believe I have isolated what 'should' be my hot source but nothing. Can anyone out there help me understand what may have happened and what I may want to try to fix this problem???

 

Welcome to the forums! Is the circuit already fed from an existing GFCI in another bathroom, crawlspace, garage, or other location? Of course I'm going to have to ask you why you left the circuit live to replace the receptacle

 

Welcome to the forums

If there was no electrical work required.... why was the GFI receptacle replaced ?
If everything was working before the GFI was replaced.... that's where I'd check for live power.

 

If the GFCI outlet popped, you probably tripped a branch breaker OR burnt a weak connection between the branch breaker and the GFCI outlet. I wouldn't have expected the main breaker to trip. Did you turn all branch breakers fully and firmly off and then turn them back on? Did you pull and check connections at the receptacle between the branch breaker and the bathroom GFI outlet?

What happened when he hit the reset button, did the GFCI receptacle reset or did nothing happen? A GDCI receptacle will not reset if there is no power to it. If the GFCI receptacle did reset and you still have no power, you probably have a bad GFCI receptacle.

 

Thanks guys for all the help. I have no idea why my brother-in-law kept the power live. The problem was back on the only other plug in the circuit and when this was inspected we changed the wiring (swapped the black and the white wires) and everything now is fine??????

Thanks for the tips guys, greatly appreciated.

 

Hopefully you didn't just randomly switch the black and white wires.
The black and white wires need to be connected to the proper side of the receptacle.

The black connects to the gold screw on the shorter slot side of the receptacle.
The white connects to the silver screw on the longer slot side of the receptacle.