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southern MN | Electricity can do odd things as it tries to find its way home.
Add on re wiring of stuff, it’s pretty easy to make it work that day, but so often do it yourselfers confuse neutral and ground wire - in the old days that was accepted practice actually.
Now something goes wrong, and the electricity finds a new path. And it can be very difficult to figure out without knowing all the different possible paths there are.
Often times your problem ends up being in the neutral wire somewhere in the system. The electricity is coming in, but has no way to leave.
When a switch gets thrown or a thing gets plugged in, somewhere along the way that light, switch, or thing is now allowing electricity to pass through and find a way home. So now all the other things work again, but all the electricity is being diverted through that switch, light, thing. Of course that isn’t right, and dangerous.
Many of us figure when something doesn’t light up it isn’t getting any electricity.
In your case, often the thing has power, but it can’t complete the circuit.
A good electrician should find that. But much like random engine problems that only show up every 20th time you start it, a problem like this can come and go which makes it tough to find - everything might work and seem fine today, and go bad again tomorrow…..
I doubt this is your problem, but when I had a new breaker box put in my old house, the electricians left over night. When I turned on my old push button 3 way hallway switches, the lights didn’t come on. When I turned them off, they glowed very dimly (dark enough to notice at night, we didn’t notice while they were here). Fiddled with the switches a bit, then turned that circuit off. Mentioned it to the electrician in the morning, the young apprentice looked at me cross eyed, the old pro said, oh, yea, you have the old switch style. They need the right polarity, we need to switch the wires. Easy fix.
Paul
Edited by paul the original 11/5/2026 12:06
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Shop wiring riddle.
