Circuit Breaker Problem

Up on the 3rd floor in Becky's studio she suddenly lost power when she plugged in a heater that had been running from an outlet across the room. Well, for half of the room as it turned out. She had moved the heater to the other side of the room and into a different outlet.

First I went down to the basement to check the circuit breakers and saw that one of them was in the off position but when I flipped it back to on it just reverted back to off. I tried this several times with no success of getting the power on for that breaker. There were notes on the breakers and I checked out the ones that said 3rd floor and they also noted that they were in the bedrooms on the 2nd floor. One for each.

I went back upstairs to see where the power was out. The three outlets on the left side of the room were out. Also the overhead light in the closet. I went into the other room and discovered the outlets where the stereo was plugged into were out. Also the overhead light in the closet in that room too plus the main overhead light. The other outlets across the room were OK. I went down to check the power in the 2nd floor bedrooms. The overhead light in Kate's room was out. That was all. Everything was fine in Sean's room. So it turned out that the breaker in the off position controlled the outlets and lights on the one side of the house and the other side was fine. 

I contacted our electrical service MJM Electric and they said they could be over the next day to check out the problem that I had explained in an email and then phone call.

Today Joe from MJM Electric came by and the first thing I did was take him down to the breakers in the basement. Then he flipped the breaker from the Off position to On and it worked this time. It held and did not flip back like it did with me several times before. He flipped it back off and then we went upstairs while I explained the problem on the 3rd floor. He took apart the outlet that had caused the problem and replaced the wiring. He went down and flipped the breaker again. We had power in all of the outlets and overhead lights again.

Joe then explained how our electric circuits were set up on the third floor which had been renovated in the 80's after the fire in the house. The problem with the circuit breaker shutting off was because Becky had plugged in the second heater on the same circuit which overloaded it. Previously they were on different sides of the room and on different circuits. So now we now how things are setup there and there will be no more problems as long as the heaters are on different circuits. We also talked about those portable air conditioners and he said that would not be a problem on our circuits.

Now everything is working and Becky is up there working too.