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Why Did My Outdoor Outlet Stop Working?

Nine times out of ten, an outdoor outlet that suddenly went dead has not broken. A ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) protecting it has tripped and cut the power, and the catch is that the button you need to press is often on a different outlet, in the garage or a bathroom, that feeds this one behind the wall. Before you assume anything is damaged, find that GFCI and press its reset. If it will not stay reset, or if it keeps tripping once your decorations are plugged in, the outlet is doing its job and telling you something is wrong with what is plugged into it. The rest of this page walks through finding the reset, telling a ground fault apart from a plain overload, and when to stop and call a licensed electrician.

Planning the display so it does not overload the circuit in the first place is half the battle. The GFCI Breaker Sizing Calculator shows the ampere math a protected circuit is held to, so you can see how much load an outdoor outlet is actually good for before the breaker or the GFCI has anything to say about it.

First, find the GFCI, because it may not be this outlet

Outdoor outlets at a house are required to be GFCI protected, but that protection does not have to live on the outlet itself. One GFCI device can protect several ordinary outlets wired downstream of it. It is very common for a single GFCI in the garage, a bathroom, or on another exterior wall to feed every outdoor receptacle on that side of the house. So when the patio outlet goes dark, the tripped button is often nowhere near it.

Walk the likely spots and look for a receptacle with TEST and RESET buttons where the RESET has popped out. Check the garage, the bathrooms, the kitchen, the basement, and any other outdoor outlet. Press RESET firmly until it clicks and stays in. If power comes back to your dead outlet, you have found it. Note where it is, because it is the one you will come back to every time this happens.

If nothing looks tripped, check the main panel for a breaker that has moved to the middle or the off position, and reset that fully off, then on. Some homes protect outdoor outlets with a GFCI breaker in the panel rather than a GFCI receptacle, and that breaker has its own test button.

A tripped GFCI and a tripped breaker are not the same thing

These are two different protective devices catching two different problems, and they reset in two different places. Knowing which one tripped tells you what to fix.

A GFCI watches for current leaking out of the circuit to ground, which is what happens when water gets into a plug or a person touches a live part. It is built to cut power at a very small leak, in the range of 4 to 6 milliamps, long before that current could hurt someone. It does not care how many amps the decorations draw. When a GFCI trips, you reset it at its own button.

A circuit breaker in the panel watches for too much current, an overload or a short, and protects the wiring in the walls. It does not care about a small leak to ground. When a breaker trips, you reset it at the panel. If your outlet is dead and no GFCI is tripped, look here next.

Worked example: which one is your display tripping?

A standard outdoor outlet is 120 volts on a 15-amp circuit. Anything left running all evening counts as a continuous load, and the safe working ceiling for a continuous load is 80 percent of the circuit rating:

15 A × 0.80 = 12 A

12 A × 120 V = 1,440 W

Say you plug in a heavy old-fashioned display and the outlet goes dead a few minutes later. Add it up:

8 incandescent C9 strings × 175 W = 1,400 W

1 fog machine = 600 W

Total: 2,000 W ÷ 120 V = 16.7 A

At 16.7 amps this is over the 15-amp breaker, and it is well past the 12-amp all-evening ceiling. That is an overload, and it trips the breaker in the panel, not the GFCI. The reset is at the panel, and the real fix is to cut the load: switch the incandescent strings to LED, which sip a fraction of the power, or split the display across two circuits fed by different breakers.

Now suppose the same outlet trips only after it rains, and the button that popped is the GFCI. Nothing was overloaded. Water found its way into a plug or a cord end and started leaking current to ground, past that few-milliamp threshold, and the GFCI cut the power exactly as it should. The fix here is not electrical load at all. It is drying and protecting the wet connection so the leak stops.

If it will not reset, or keeps tripping

Work through it one plug at a time.

  • Unplug everything, then reset. If the outlet resets and holds with nothing plugged in, the problem is in your decorations or cords, not the outlet. Plug items back in one at a time until the trip comes back, and you have found the culprit.
  • Look for water. A cord connection lying in wet grass, a plug without an in-use cover, or a cracked decoration housing are the usual sources of a rain-triggered trip. Elevate and cover the connections and let them dry.
  • Check for damage. A cut jacket, a crushed cord, or a scorched plug can leak or short. Retire any cord or decoration that shows it. A damaged cord is not repairable with tape.
  • Reset the GFCI itself, not just the panel. If a downstream outlet stays dead, the GFCI upstream is still tripped. Find it and press its reset.
  • When it still will not hold, stop. A GFCI that trips with nothing plugged in, or a breaker that trips on a light load, points at a fault in the fixed wiring. That is where you call a licensed electrician rather than keep resetting it.

Do not defeat the protection

It is tempting to run an extension cord from an indoor, non-GFCI outlet to skip the tripping, or to swap the GFCI for a plain outlet. Do not. The GFCI is the one device standing between a wet outdoor cord and a shock, and outdoors is exactly where the code requires it. A trip is not the outlet being difficult. It is the outlet catching a fault you want caught. Fix the cause, keep the GFCI.

NEC reference

NEC 2020. Outdoor receptacles at a dwelling require GFCI protection under 210.8(A)(3), and that protection may be provided at the receptacle or by a device upstream that protects it, which is why one GFCI can control several outlets. The 4 to 6 milliamp trip band is the Class A ground-fault threshold from the UL 943 product standard the NEC references. The 80 percent working ceiling for a load running three hours or more follows the continuous-load rules in 210.19(A) and 210.20(A), with a continuous load defined in Article 100. Watts equal volts times amps is the power relationship, not a code value.

Results are for reference only. Verify against the applicable adopted edition of the NEC and consult a licensed electrician for code compliance.

For the whole season

The Holiday Electrical Safety Handbook

This guide answers one question. The Handbook covers Halloween through New Year's: how many amps a circuit can really carry (a 15 amp breaker means 12 amps, a 20 means 16), extension cords, GFCI outlets, outdoor displays in the weather, the Thanksgiving kitchen, tree lights, space heaters, and what to do when something goes wrong. Every figure is pre-converted to amps, so you add instead of calculate.

Read on Kindle Paperback on Amazon Free circuit map and load worksheet

Get the next seasonal safety check by email

Optional. Short emails before each holiday, written for homeowners.

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