When we first moved into our new house, we discovered something weird in the electrical system. Most of the time, everything worked great. But in the few times we got prolonged periods of rain, the garage door opener quit working. Since we use our garage to store a car rather than filling it with junk, this was a major problem.

Through some experimentation we discovered two things: 1) the garage door opener was on the same circuit as the part of the master bathroom, and 2) the GFCI outlet in the master bath was tripping upline of the garage door opener. Resetting the GFCI outlet, sometimes only after multiple attempts, restored power to the garage door opener, at least for a time. Until a couple days passed with no rain, the GFCI kept tripping. Once everything dried out, the problem went away, so we ignored it over the summer. This kind of problem, whatever it was, lay well beyond my expertise or willingness to learn, lest I receive a painful and possibly deadly lesson. The past weekend’s rains made the problem worse than I’ver ever seen, so I finally contacted an electrician.

The one I contacted was Milestone Electric. Overall I was impressed. Overnight I submitted my request online, of course, and an employee called me the minute the office opened on Tuesday and scheduled an appointment for lunchtime the same day. Two more phone calls kept me informed regarding the electrician’s arrival time, and he arrived within the specified two-hour window and got to work. He suspected bad and possibly conflicting GFCI outlets and possibly a leak on an exterior outlet, so he replaced all three. So far everything seems to work great. The price was higher than expected, but at least it’s done, and I didn’t burn off my eyebrows trying unsuccessfully to fix it myself.