I arrived home tonight with full intentions of feeding my fish..watching some TV and cruising my normal internet favorites.
This was not to be.
Instead , I was met with total darkness and an eerie silence from my fish room. I have a GE GFCI circuit breaker in my panel box for the room and it had seen fit to trip, cutting all power to the room and its necessary implements of life support for my wet pets.
F'in GREAT!!!
OK..I need to figure out,,through a process of elimination, which device,plug or outlet is having an issue that has ruined my evening..
First..I turn off one strip...go back and flip breaker...nuthin'
Second...turn off another strip...go back and flip breaker...nuthin'
cut too ...
Attempt number Twelve...
I finally realize that going to the source of the power may be my salvation. Two outlet boxes that are in the extreme top corners of the room are the main sources of electricity to the strips...
The guy who put them in was very tall...I however am not...and my step stool is not much help. It's a bit of a "stretch " for me to get to the outlets. I cuss this electrician's existence and have bad thoughts about him every time I have to get to these things....
Both outlets have four plugs,,with heavy gauge extension cords to the power strips... into which pumps,lights, filters and timers are plugged ,,,
I unplugged all the right side cords....the breaker tripped..
I plugged them back in..
I unplugged the cords in the left side breaker..
The breaker did not trip...
I returned power to the pumps, lights and filters on the right side of the room ...and took a break.
After my brief respite I began to one by one plug the extension cords back into the left side.... the last cord tripped the breaker...AHA!!....
My next thought is that it must be the cord or the strip it supplies juice to....so,,,in order to get back lights and filtration powered up as fast as possible, I grab a new cord...take all the stuff off the old strip that it supplies .....employ a new strip ..and everything is back up and running....
..whew...
After inspecting the old cord and how it was plugged into the old strip...I found that moister had built up on the old cord...finding its way down the line..and this may have been the cause of the problem...I wiped both off, dried them off...then plugged both the strip and cord in separately ....and neither tripped the breaker.
No fish were damaged or killed in this evening of drama....
Perhaps they were stressed? inconvenienced? slightly bothered?
Yes...but not as much as I was...
