Appreciating things done well

[Diablo de Acero]

Last week I pasted a new house being constructed with a newly poured concrete drive that went straight out to the street with no flared apron. Yesterday I pasted it again, but now they dug for a flared section on both sides of the block joining the street. Expensive mistake. Argh...

[giordana93]

well here they just painted over the wall paper when "re-doing" the baths.... I have one outlet in the kitchen that is not the last in the series and yet I couldn't find any outlet downstream from it until working on my kitchen island a few years later and found a curled up live wire (romex) living in the space between the bottom of the cabinets behind the kick plate. well they did put electrical tape on it before burying it under the cabinet....

D, no chance there's a (bad) 3 way switch in there somewhere? or a mis-wired 3 way circuit? we had one of those too. oh wait, another favorite: both hot water heaters--upstairs, mind you, so severe flooding potential for the lower floor--have plain old pvc for the emergency hot water pressure release plumbing.

[jclay]

That's my understanding, there's a resistance of some sort. If it was open I think we'd get no voltage....I think.

All the connections between the outlets in the dining room are good. The connections at the breaker at good. Between the dining room and the breaker there's no other switches or outlets inside the house on that circuit. Under the house - who knows. Apparently it's not uncommon to put an outlet next to the air handler for anyone doing work on it to use, and the air handler is under the room. The "first" outlet in the circuit is actually right next to the air return grille, so close the faceplate almost touches the edge of the grille. I haven't been under there to look yet tho.

I'm hoping it's a bad outlet under the house, as that'll be a lot easier to swap vs having to pull a new wire.

I'll report back whenever I get under there, it'll be after the holidays, we're busy busy busy the next few weekends.

Bad/corroded connections on the daisy chain route back to the N-bus bar? I never liked/trusted/used the push type receptacle connections; it's a screw (properly driven!) or nothing for me. The trick, in a house that you didn't wire, will be identifying all the nodes involved with that neutral circuit....that's obviously not news to you at this point! I've never used a toner on a neutral circuit but since there's either a high resistance point or casual/broken connection somewhere on the path of interest, maybe it would help you ID the route back to the cab? Failing that, if you turn everything in the house on and then open the breaker for that receptacle you should be able to ID all the receptacles/switches that are on that N-path; PITA for sure, but should get you there. Once you know that then identifying the point of, or wire segment containing, the problem should be possible. Lord only knows (and that's even questionable when talking about residential wiring) how and where those circuits were run. From the general description of the house wiring I think you're in for an "adventure".

And +1,000 on alwaysconfirming no energy at the point of the work regardless of circuit breakers/valves/etc.

Good luck!

[Drew]

Did you pull the panel cover? Could just be a loose neutral bond screw for that circuit. I know you said you checked it, but I didn’t see mention of pulling the panel cover, or I missed it.

Couple other things you can try:

1) Swap breakers with that circuit and another. Should just be swapping the two hots, and doesn’t take long. If le problem follows le breaker, le breaker is le problem. Replace le breaker. Edit: just realized you said you measured 120v between hot and ground. So bad breaker is unlikely.

2) Pull the neutral wire off the neutral bus in the panel, pull the neutral wire off the receptacle, and run a loose wire from the panel to the receptacle box. Wirenut the loose wire and the house wire together at one end, and measure resistance across the other end. Should be zero. If not zero, but not infinity, le wire is le problem. Replace le wire, or try to find le problem with le wire and repair le problem. I don’t see how it could be open circuit (infinity) since you said it has ~30v.

My rule of thumb for electricity on old houses: don’t bother chasing down what breaker runs what circuit. I just shut off the whole damn house. Throw the master breaker. Then you can work in the panel knowing that only the feed from the meter SHOULD be hot.

I have seen OG electricians make a short switch to identify what breakers run what circuits... basically a switch that jumps neutral to hot and pops the breaker when you close the switch. Can be particularly exciting when a breaker is bad and doesn’t trip. Several have told me they are amazed by how many breakers they find that don’t trip on a dead short. Scary stuff.

Or you could have something totally jacked up in your crawl space. You bought a house and didn’t go in the crawl space first? Woof. That’s the first place to go... hopefully you don’t find any surprises (electrical or otherwise).

I work on my own stuff because when I pay people to do things, I am generally a) poorer, and b) unhappy with the give-a-shit factor of the booger picker that did the work. This is why I change my own oil, paint my own walls, work on my own bike, build my own wheels (no offense intended), wash my own cars, mow my own grass, repair my own irrigation system, yadda yadda yadda. This is also why GOOD folks to do things WELL are like GOLD and I am happy to pay them well, and tip well, to know that their work is appreciated. But those are rare, and usually only found by word of mouth. People who have to advertise their services, have to advertise because they aren’t good enough at what they do to live on word of mouth. Ever see an ad for a GOOD attorney? There is a reason.

I don’t do tall ladders and I don’t do drywall. Beyond that, I’ll do it myself, please and thank. Good luck finding your problem. Sounds like a tough one!

/rant

[summilux]

My 1950s house was renovated in the 90s. Whenever I do electrical work I am grateful for the electrician(s) who did that work. The boxes are properly secured and the Marettes are always the correct size and taped. The line sheathing is cleanly cut and the wires pushed neatly into the box. No switch or receptacle uses the push connectors. They were good!

My tribute to them is that all the plate covers get the Tiffany Touch.

[dgaddis]

Did you pull the panel cover? Could just be a loose neutral bond screw for that circuit. I know you said you checked it, but I didn’t see mention of pulling the panel cover, or I missed it.

Couple other things you can try:

1) Swap breakers with that circuit and another. Should just be swapping the two hots, and doesn’t take long. If le problem follows le breaker, le breaker is le problem. Replace le breaker. Edit: just realized you said you measured 120v between hot and ground. So bad breaker is unlikely.

Yeah, we took the panel off and checked the connections.

And I already swapped the breaker, so it's not the breaker. It's that wire...somewhere....

[rwsaunders]

Be careful Dustin.

[ides1056]

My 1950s house was renovated in the 90s. Whenever I do electrical work I am grateful for the electrician(s) who did that work. The boxes are properly secured and the Marettes are always the correct size and taped. The line sheathing is cleanly cut and the wires pushed neatly into the box. No switch or receptacle uses the push connectors. They were good!

My tribute to them is that all the plate covers get the Tiffany Touch.

and they aligned the screws on the plate- must have been an Irishman

[davids]

and they aligned the screws on the plate- must have been an Irishman

summilux aligned them. That's his tribute.