Half of my houses electricity is gone!?

Question

Hello, let me tell you what happened. Last night i was playing computer games and around midnight, the power reset. Everything turned back on so i thought it was fine and i didnt bother checking the breaker panel. Well about 15min later, it went out for good, now our whole basement, garage, and some appliances in our kitchen dont work. My dad is an electrical supervisor and he is in Iraq right now so he cannot help much besides over the phone and i can only contact him once or twice a day. He told me to move the wire from our garage circuit breaker to the empty circuit below that one. I did it and now some of the appliances work. but about half of our house is without electricity, so i took a volt meter to find that about half of the breakers are not drawing power, Here are my questions

1. What could have caused this? too many appliances, or a power surge in the area?

2. Could there be any other problems? because we have a dishwasher that is hardwired into our electrical system and it

Answer 1

If the power is only out in "wet" areas (kitchen, bath, basement) or outdoor outlets are out, they may all be on the same single Ground Fault Interrupter circuit.  These are the square outlets in the wall with little buttons, usually (hopefully) in the kitchen or bath, or maybe a basement outlet closest to the breaker box. If the "wet" area outlet looks like any other, it may still be wired in line first to a GFI somewhere else in the house.  If a power bump kicks the GFI off, all the "wet"  outlets are off.  If you have GFI outlets, push the "reset" button in the center of the outlet.

Answer 2

report the happenings to the power co

they may be able to answer some of your questions about a power surge

I'm sure with your dads advice you are being careful, but still electricity isn't something to experiment with

Answer 3

It really sounds like you lost a phase or your main breaker is bad.  If you measure the voltage in your breaker box from the neutral bars to the two bus bars you should get 120VAC on each one.  From what you said one of them doesn't have voltage.  Next measure from the neutral to the main connection coming from your meter.  If you can locate them and see that one of them doesn't have voltage, time to call the power company.  It is also possible your house has a couple of large cartridge fuses in line with your breaker box and one of them has blown.  Trace the wiring - if it goes straight from the breaker box to the meter that is not the case.  Good luck.

Additional after your edits:  Good job Steve.  Give your dad our best also.

Answer 4

It is possible, that you may have lost your neutral in your home, that is the neutral may have gotten loose at the panel. I would recommend tightening all the wires at the breaker panel, check that you have no voltage present, whether by turning off the main and at every breaker. then check for tightness on all visible screws, remember not to over torque anything.

Also, you may want to look at several places where voltage may be present. Many outlets are wired through each receptacle, and maybe one receptacle is bad, causing all the rest down wind of it not to be working.