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Dead circuits in house MB 02-12-2007
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Posted by MB on February 12, 2007, 9:53 pm


I have 4 dead circuits in my House all on 1 wall 2 on top floor 2 on
bottom floor

I have rewired and put new outlets and tested continuity on all the 4
outlets. I noticed the line feeding the 4 outlets( the wires going to
the first of the 4 boutlets) is dead. All circuit breakers are on.
My questions is since these wires are in the walls , is there any way
to trace this wire back to the breaker panel and see if its brokenn
somewhere or at least any way to find the path of the wire? Thanks


Posted by RBM on February 12, 2007, 10:14 pm


It's likely there are more than just the four outlets on the circuit. If
indeed all the circuits are "live" at the panel, which needs to be tested by
removing the cover, it's likely that there is an open circuit at a still
live outlet preceding the dead ones, on the same circuit. Open and check all
live outlets in the vicinity of the dead ones, looking for loose
connections, especially in back stabbed connections



>I have 4 dead circuits in my House all on 1 wall 2 on top floor 2 on
> bottom floor
>
> I have rewired and put new outlets and tested continuity on all the 4
> outlets. I noticed the line feeding the 4 outlets( the wires going to
> the first of the 4 boutlets) is dead. All circuit breakers are on.
> My questions is since these wires are in the walls , is there any way
> to trace this wire back to the breaker panel and see if its brokenn
> somewhere or at least any way to find the path of the wire? Thanks
>



Posted by HeyBub on February 13, 2007, 9:02 am


MB wrote:
> I have 4 dead circuits in my House all on 1 wall 2 on top floor 2 on
> bottom floor
>
> I have rewired and put new outlets and tested continuity on all the 4
> outlets. I noticed the line feeding the 4 outlets( the wires going to
> the first of the 4 boutlets) is dead. All circuit breakers are on.
> My questions is since these wires are in the walls , is there any way
> to trace this wire back to the breaker panel and see if its brokenn
> somewhere or at least any way to find the path of the wire? Thanks

The chances of a broken connection inside a wall are vanishingly small.

You might be able to use one of those signal injection gizmos and run the
detector over the wall to trace the wiring back to the next receptacle in
the chain - which is where the disconnect will be.



Posted by Joe on February 13, 2007, 2:27 pm


> I have 4 dead circuits in my House all on 1 wall 2 on top floor 2 on
> bottom floor
>
> I have rewired and put new outlets and tested continuity on all the 4
> outlets. I noticed the line feeding the 4 outlets( the wires going to
> the first of the 4 boutlets) is dead. All circuit breakers are on.
> My questions is since these wires are in the walls , is there any way
> to trace this wire back to the breaker panel and see if its brokenn
> somewhere or at least any way to find the path of the wire? Thanks

Any GFCI's upstream of this string? Or el cheapo backstabber outlets?

Joe


Posted by MB on February 13, 2007, 4:09 pm


Thanks,

Yes the outlets were backstabbed, thats why I rewired correctly.
There is a GFI for the bathroom near this first outlet in the
series. The GFI outlet works fine. I will check, possibly it is
feeding off of there. If that doesnt work I guess I need to trace the
wire path?


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