Electrical problems
No power to one room but the rest of the house is fine
One dead room almost always means one tripped circuit or one failed connection. Here is how to work out which, and what not to do.
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- Licence 82270
Check the switchboard first
One dead room, everything else fine, almost always means one circuit has tripped. Open the board and look for a breaker or safety switch sitting halfway or in the off position. Switch it fully off, then back on firmly.
If it holds, you are done. If it trips straight back out, stop. Something on that circuit is faulted and repeatedly resetting it is how switchboards overheat.
If nothing has tripped
A room going dead with nothing tripped usually points at a connection rather than a fault. The common ones:
- A failed connection at a power point. Circuits are usually looped through the points, so one bad terminal kills everything downstream of it. Very common in older places and in anything that has been renovated cheaply.
- A light switch or fitting that has burnt out and taken the loop with it.
- A ceiling rose or junction that has corroded. Salt air and wet season humidity get into ceiling spaces, particularly near the coast.
- Rodent or gecko damage. More common than people expect in this part of the world.
Two things worth checking before you ring anyone
Is it actually the whole room? Try a lamp you know works in each point. Sometimes it is one dead point and the rest of the room is fine, which is a smaller job.
Are the lights out too, or just the power points? Lights and power are usually on separate circuits. If both are out in the same room and nowhere else, that is unusual and worth mentioning when you call, because it changes where we look first.
What we actually do
Fault finding is the biggest single line of work we do, 8,840 jobs since 2020. We start at the board, work out what is and is not protected, then isolate by circuit. Insulation resistance testing tells us where the fault actually is. The goal is to find the fault, not to start replacing accessories and hope.
Worth knowing: under Queensland's electrical safety laws, testing is expressly a form of energised electrical work, including locating faults. It is licensed work, not a job for a handy mate.
Source: WorkSafe Queensland, testing.
Straight answers
No power to one room: your questions
One room has no power and the breaker will not stay on. What now?
Leave it off and ring us. A breaker that trips immediately on reset means there is a short or a serious fault on that circuit. It is protecting the wiring, and the wiring is what stops a fault becoming a fire.
If one room has no power, could it be the power company?
If it is one room, no. A supply problem takes out the whole property or a whole phase, not a single circuit. If your neighbours are out too, that is a network issue and Ergon is the call.
Is it worth me pulling a power point off the wall to look?
No, and in Queensland it is an offence to do electrical work without the appropriate licence, which includes removing an accessory. Beyond the law, the circuit may still be live from another direction, which is exactly how people get hurt.
Other things that go wrong
Common electrical problems in the Douglas Shire
No power to one room? We will find the actual cause.
Leave us a number and we will ring you back, or send the whole job through and we will quote it.