Exterior Outlets
Do you have exterior outlets at your home? Do you have issues with breakers tripping when you use these? Holiday Lights causing issues?
We hear from customers very often about these outlets being an issue. For some reason, many electricians when wiring a new construction home especially will have the garage outlets and these exterior outlets on the same breaker or line. We find many homeowners like to have an extra refrigerator or freezer plugged in the garage, thus when these outlets get wet and trip it causes the fridge/freezer to not work.
We find more times than not that these outlets since they’re outside get overlooked and forgotten about, over time the seals many times on these outlets break causing water to get inside or behind, so when they get used for holiday lights, back porch lights, snowblower, etc they trip the breaker. We believe you should be able to get 20 years out of these boxes if installed properly and used properly.
The refrigerator freezer that many people have in their garages is the next part of the issue we see, these when the fridge or freezer needs to turn on and cool down can pull a large amount of power but then when running outside that pull a relatively low amount of power, if other items such as lawnmower, snowblower, holiday lights, etc on the same circuit and all are being used at the same time it can cause this breaker in your basement most likely to trip. The issue is having too much pulling power at the same time, they’re only meant for a certain amount of amps to be pulled depending on how yours may be setup.
Our suggestion is replacing these exterior boxes (easy DIY if you’re comfortable) every 20 years with new boxes as well as if you do have a freezer/fridge in your garage on the same circuit to run a new circuit for this to avoid issues in the future.
