u/AbbreviationsKey3609

I’ve already posted a question in this sub today but now I’ve gone down another potentially scary rabbit hole and I’m freaking out a bit. We just had a switch in the bathroom go bad and now I’m terrified my house is going to burn down. We will be calling an electrician but I’m just trying to get a rough idea how bad this might be.

We bought this house last year. Previous owners had the house wired for a generator so there is a second electrical panel next to the original that they put all the important things on. Everything is labeled so poorly and when I flipped off the breaker to the bathroom we discovered this also killed all 4 outlets in the bedroom next to that bathroom as well as the front exterior lights, entryway lights, and two sets of ceiling lights in the kitchen. Not sure if it was always like this or if maybe things got combined on the secondary panel for the generator. My spiral started because I was confused why the breaker showed 20 amps for this circuit but the light switch that failed says 15a with 14AWG wire. So I’m googling it and technically I guess this is allowed but everything I’ve read is saying the bathroom circuit can’t be supplying power to other rooms. The bathroom has one GFCI outlet and three switches, one for the vanity light, one for the light over the shower, and one for the exhaust fan. Assuming there is an open breaker somewhere (which is very possible because so many on the original panel are blank) how difficult is it going to be to “move” these other rooms to their own circuit?

I want to note we will very likely be calling an electrician to come look at this anyway but in an attempt to ease my mind until then I wanted to start by asking you all here. I’ve had some bad luck in the past with other tradesmen that either weren’t very good at their job (ie we had to get a second opinion from someone else and they had to fix what the first person screwed up) or they weren’t very willing to explain it to someone like me who doesn’t know much about this stuff so getting some insight from multiple professionals here will hopefully ease my mind just a bit.

There’s a ton of extra information below in case it’s important but the long story short is I’m trying to figure out if Google is giving me accurate information when it says a popping/cracking light switch doesn’t necessarily mean faulty wiring but rather MAYBE the switch has just gone bad and replacing it might fix the issue. This is obviously not always the case but it’s one possibility.

Right before bed last night my husband went to the bathroom and when he turned on the vanity light the switch made a really unsettling cracking/popping sound and the lights sort of came on a bit dim but he quickly flipped the switch off because he thought he may have seen a spark as well. He proceeded to flip the switch on and off a few times in an attempt to show me, not sure that was the right move but I have only very basic electrical knowledge so who knows. Before I went down to the panel to flip off that breaker he tried the two other switches on that same gang, one goes to the light above the shower and the other is for the exhaust fan. Both turned on without issue and didn’t spark or make noise if that’s relevant at all. Regardless I turned off the power and we took off the plate cover just to make sure there wasn’t any visible damage or god forbid a fire or something. We didn’t notice any smoke or anything that looked burnt but there was a bit of a smell. It wasn’t necessarily smoke or a burnt smell but it was noticeable enough that I’m quite nervous about it. Maybe burnt wiring/insulation doesn’t have that typical smoky smell I’m used to with burning things…

Basically here’s where I’m at. An extensive Google search at midnight told me it could be many things and obviously cutting the power and calling in a professional was the number one recommendation. One of the less scary things it could be was the switch going bad, which I didn’t realize was a thing but also makes sense for switches that get a lot of use. Multiple places said we could attempt to replace the switch and then flip the breaker back on and see if it’s still popping/cracking and if it does then the switch wasn’t the problem and a professional will need to be called because it’s likely a problem with the wiring. Is this smart for us to attempt to replace the switch or stupid? We’ve replaced a couple switches in this house already with smart switches when we moved in last year so we’re comfortable swapping a switch BUT if this is in fact NOT recommended by professionals then we will not attempt it. Electrical fires scare the crap out of me BUT the front door exterior light, entryway lights, and a couple of the overhead kitchen lights are also on this breaker and while again, I’m not going to risk a fire, I’d much prefer to be able to use those kitchen and front hall lights and I’m not sure how quickly we can get an electrician out here. We’ve never needed to call one and I don’t want to just go with the first person who has immediate availability so if attempting to swap the switch to see first if that fixes it is not frowned upon we would like to try it.

I want to preface this with the fact that we had cats my entire childhood and I don’t remember ever having to deal with this so I’m kind of at a loss. We use regular litter (tidy cats lightweight specifically) and we’ve tried more litter, less litter, switching to a bigger box (that was somehow worse) but at this point I fear there isn’t really anything more we can do. Obviously cats track litter around and that’s unavoidable but if we’re not home or awake and she tracks her wet pee paws on the carpet/rugs/furniture our house is going to reek of cat pee. Has anyone else dealt with a similar problem and found a solution? Do we need to try a different type of litter?