Arggggggh…..
So I was doing laundry and vacuuming at the same time when the breaker snapped. My apartment’s electricity is already finicky from the start, but I thought all I had to do was flip the breaker back on. I go to my breaker panel and and all the breakers were in their on position. I try flipping a few off and on, but that didn’t seem to help. I even tried flipping all of them off, waited a few mintues, and flipping them all back on. No luck.
I then went to talk to the apartment manager, so she tells me about this “other” breaker switch that’s supposed to be in my 2nd bedroom. I go back down and can’t find it. Apparently the 1st floor breaker panel location is different from the other floors. Anyway, the maintenance guy won’t be here until tomorrow and there’s no one around to help me. I give PSE (Puget Sound Energy) a call, and they told me that because my neighbor’s electricity was still on, that a power outage that they’re responsible for was unlikely. She said she could send someone out, but if they find out the fault isn’t theirs, they can charge up to $150 for the visit. So I’m like, let me talk to my apartment manager again. We didn’t get too far with the 2nd talk, but she did mention about a main breaker switch, but had no idea where it was at. She asked if I had any place to stay tonight and I said I could probably take care of that in the case where I do need to find some place.
I went back and started searching outside the complex. I found the electric meters and they were all locked. Then I noticed this small latch underneath each meter which wasn’t locked. I opened the one that seemed to be mine, since it’s the lowest one and its meter wasn’t moving. Behold, it was off. I switched it back on, and my power came back up. I thought I was set.
I go and tell my apartment manager and she’s happy and I’m happy. I come back and find out, not everything is working. My washing machine and dryer won’t turn out. Trying to use it to actually knocks the power out for several rooms. My bedroom electricity seems to be super finicky, where turning on a light will dim lights in other rooms. My computer won’t even turn out w/o switching over to the UPS power supply.
But not all hope is lost. There seems to be a set of outlets that aren’t affected. I’ve moved my computer out there for the time being.
So I went and tried to troubleshoot this problem. I turned each breaker off one at a time, to see if there was a certain breaker that was causing this problem. That didn’t turn up anything useful. I unscrewed the outlet where the vacuum cleaner was last plugged in, but everything in there seemed fine. I was thinking something might’ve shorted or is still being shorted.
Anyway, I’ll have to talk with the apartment manager again tomorrow to resolve this.