Insufficient Electrical Outlets/Potential DIY Electrical Work

[Micah Haworth]

Hello, MN renter here,

We’ve been living in this unit for almost a year now and have had a problem with tripping a specific breaker for our unit. The circuit covers at least 10 outlets including the kitchen stove, microwave, dishwasher, (all three of which are plugged into hidden outlets) countertop outlets, outlets in the living room, dining room and bedroom. We have an air conditioning unit plugged into one, but we’re having this problem before we installed that. It seems impossible not to trip the breaker, even when just running a fan and the air conditioner it has tripped on us in the middle of the night. I would have thought is was us plugging too many things in but you can’t even use the microwave at the same time as anything else anymore.

when I first moved in, we had them replace an outlet that wouldn’t hold a plug in it. There was also an outlet in a cabinet above the stove/microwave that was just a loose box with a foot of cord running into the wall that we had them fix and the landlady told us that “she didn’t know it wasn’t up to code” when they were the ones that installed the cabinets. 

Is it out of bounds to be worried that the electrical work in this unit is insufficient for a rental and that the landlord can’t do their own electrical work anymore since it’s a rental? I plan on asking her to take a look at it and consider having an inspector take a look, but I don’t want to be seen as “at fault” since she lived in the unit before we did and didn’t have the same problems?