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My building, and indeed my neighborhood it seems, gets power from two different sources/trunks/connections/whatever, and this split extends all the way down to the level of outlets within the individual condo units. That means it's possible for me to lose power to most, but not all, of my unit if one of those sources/connections breaks for some reason.
I learned about this problem this morning when my bedside clock display suddenly turned off. When I got up to investigate and tried turning on the bedroom light, it did not turn on, verifying that yes, there was a power outage and it was not just my faithful clock finally suddenly dying after the past 22 years or so of service. However, when I went out into the living room, I discovered to my surprise that some parts of my unit still did have power.
I'm going to have to explain the layout of my unit to make this clear. The entire north half of the unit is the living room, with the kitchen area adjacent and open to it on the southwest side. The bedroom is in the southeast corner, wholly walled off as a separate room, while the bathroom is across the hallway from the bedroom in the southwest corner, "behind" the kitchen area. (I have a set of photos of my condo on Flickr, though I don't know whether that'd help.)
So in the kitchen, the refrigerator was running and the microwave had power—both were plugged into outlets along the same internal wall separating the kitchen from the bathroom. However, the oven, physically adjacent to the microwave but plugged into the outer west wall, did not have power. Unfortunately, I had no way to determine whether the hot water heater still had power. It's located underneath the counter in the southwest corner, directly below the microwave (powered) with access blocked by the oven (not powered), and I have no idea which wall it's actually plugged into—nor any reason to be certain that its outlet would still be powered, even if it were on the "powered" wall.
The living room seemed to be evenly split right through the middle. My DSL router, adjacent to the oven on the western outer wall, was off, and the outlet on the west half of the north wall did not have power. However, the outlets on all three sides of the eastern half of the living room clearly did still have power, as indicated by the power lights for the power strips. I could tell that they had at least momentarily lost power, because my Mac Mini was shut off.
The wall heaters in the living room were still running, although at a weirdly reduced level: they were spinning their fans and producing warm air, but it wasn't blowing out with its normal force. The wall heaters are on opposite walls of the living room, one on the east side that still had power and one on the west side that did not. Curious, I went to check the bedroom wall heater, which normally isn't running—the bedroom thermostat has to be set higher than the living room in order for it to run, and normally I keep it lower because the other heaters are sufficient. I turned that thermostat up and the heater came on, although also at the same reduced level as the other two.
The rest of my bedroom had no power, although I didn't check the outlet behind the bed along the same internal wall where, on the living room side, the power was working. The bathroom also had no power, including the side adjacent to the powered kitchen wall.
At this point I was guessing that the problem might be with my circuit breakers, though they were all in the on position. I tested them one at a time, and learned something else that seemed peculiar to me: the wall outlets on the eastern half of the living room did not seem to be hooked up to any of the circuit breakers. That doesn't really make sense to me, I thought that all the wiring would at some point hook up to the circuit breakers, but I never saw any loss of power there during my testing. I'm not an electrician though so what do I know. I did learn that the breaker labeled "washer" actually controlled the internal wall where the fridge and microwave were plugged in, and that the breakers labeled "heat" were correct.
Fortunately, I was saved from wondering what I was supposed to do about my mysterious partial loss of power when another condo resident called to say he had briefly lost power and now the garage door wasn't working. Now I knew it was some kind of building-wide problem and not just something weird in my unit. It turned out other units had similar problems: the resident who called had all of his power back, his next-door neighbor had no power at all, and yet another neighbor had the same partial power problems that I did. And other places in the neighborhood also had power troubles. That meant there was only one thing to do: pack up my laptop and head out to a cafe until the power came back.
I learned about this problem this morning when my bedside clock display suddenly turned off. When I got up to investigate and tried turning on the bedroom light, it did not turn on, verifying that yes, there was a power outage and it was not just my faithful clock finally suddenly dying after the past 22 years or so of service. However, when I went out into the living room, I discovered to my surprise that some parts of my unit still did have power.
I'm going to have to explain the layout of my unit to make this clear. The entire north half of the unit is the living room, with the kitchen area adjacent and open to it on the southwest side. The bedroom is in the southeast corner, wholly walled off as a separate room, while the bathroom is across the hallway from the bedroom in the southwest corner, "behind" the kitchen area. (I have a set of photos of my condo on Flickr, though I don't know whether that'd help.)
So in the kitchen, the refrigerator was running and the microwave had power—both were plugged into outlets along the same internal wall separating the kitchen from the bathroom. However, the oven, physically adjacent to the microwave but plugged into the outer west wall, did not have power. Unfortunately, I had no way to determine whether the hot water heater still had power. It's located underneath the counter in the southwest corner, directly below the microwave (powered) with access blocked by the oven (not powered), and I have no idea which wall it's actually plugged into—nor any reason to be certain that its outlet would still be powered, even if it were on the "powered" wall.
The living room seemed to be evenly split right through the middle. My DSL router, adjacent to the oven on the western outer wall, was off, and the outlet on the west half of the north wall did not have power. However, the outlets on all three sides of the eastern half of the living room clearly did still have power, as indicated by the power lights for the power strips. I could tell that they had at least momentarily lost power, because my Mac Mini was shut off.
The wall heaters in the living room were still running, although at a weirdly reduced level: they were spinning their fans and producing warm air, but it wasn't blowing out with its normal force. The wall heaters are on opposite walls of the living room, one on the east side that still had power and one on the west side that did not. Curious, I went to check the bedroom wall heater, which normally isn't running—the bedroom thermostat has to be set higher than the living room in order for it to run, and normally I keep it lower because the other heaters are sufficient. I turned that thermostat up and the heater came on, although also at the same reduced level as the other two.
The rest of my bedroom had no power, although I didn't check the outlet behind the bed along the same internal wall where, on the living room side, the power was working. The bathroom also had no power, including the side adjacent to the powered kitchen wall.
At this point I was guessing that the problem might be with my circuit breakers, though they were all in the on position. I tested them one at a time, and learned something else that seemed peculiar to me: the wall outlets on the eastern half of the living room did not seem to be hooked up to any of the circuit breakers. That doesn't really make sense to me, I thought that all the wiring would at some point hook up to the circuit breakers, but I never saw any loss of power there during my testing. I'm not an electrician though so what do I know. I did learn that the breaker labeled "washer" actually controlled the internal wall where the fridge and microwave were plugged in, and that the breakers labeled "heat" were correct.
Fortunately, I was saved from wondering what I was supposed to do about my mysterious partial loss of power when another condo resident called to say he had briefly lost power and now the garage door wasn't working. Now I knew it was some kind of building-wide problem and not just something weird in my unit. It turned out other units had similar problems: the resident who called had all of his power back, his next-door neighbor had no power at all, and yet another neighbor had the same partial power problems that I did. And other places in the neighborhood also had power troubles. That meant there was only one thing to do: pack up my laptop and head out to a cafe until the power came back.
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