Question for electricians. Circuit tracing wall outlets?


I have access to the the type of tool that lets you plug a transmitter in a wall socket and find it's circuit breaker if you scan the connections in the mains panel, but I'd really like to know if there is some type of tool that will let you check several wall outlets in a room to see if they are on the same circuit when you do not have access to the mains panel.

Does anyone know of a specific tool or a way to use a tool like I described above to do that?


Thanks.


best regards,
mike

If you don't have access to the mains panel what do you do if a trip/fuse blows?


It would normally be safe to assume that all sockets in a single room would be on the same circuit.  They way to test would be to turn off the breakers one at a time and see which sockets go dead...  but if you can't access the breaker panel...  what do you do if a breaker/fuse blows?

You wish you had known that the two wall sockets were not on the same circuit.

Hence the question.

;-)

We currently use a tool that we can test for circuit paths without shutting down power... but we need access to the breaker panel.

I'm hoping to find a way to do it with out access to the panel.


best regards,
mike

Plug lights into them- turn the lights on- start turning off breakers.

Bend a wire coat hanger into a U shape.  Shove the ends into a socket.
Any other socket that goes dead is on the same circuit..

Simples

I added on to my house...one room extended...I checked all the outlets and they
were all on the same circuit....except the one I missed.
When I pulled the recepticles out of the box it grabbed a hold and I swear my
teeth did the long version drum solo to In-the gadda.

I thought I was going to have to take my wife to hospital when it was over...
she was in pain from laughing.
 
 
Be patient Mike. Herb will chime in shortly. You know those electicians....he won't
finish his morning coffee until around 9:30. :)
 

spacey


I added on to my house...one room extended...I checked all the outlets and they
were all on the same circuit....except the one I missed.
When I pulled the recepticles out of the box it grabbed a hold and I swear my
teeth did the long version drum solo to In-the gadda.

I thought I was going to have to take my wife to hospital when it was over...
she was in pain from laughing.

I have done exactly that thing.
 
Some wise-ass had decided to run an extension from the lighting circuit before I moved in, I was exchanging some worn sockets, so I left the light circuit on so I could see what I was doing and had turned all the outlets OFF.
 
Or so I thought...
 
So in a way I found out what was connected to what without access to the main panel.

Running late.... its 9:49am....one more mouthful of cold coffee left.... uhhh.. ok all gone...

I'd suggest getting access to the breaker box. I have one of those tracer things and while it has been useful a time or two..... it mostly assists you in trying to make an educated guess as to what goes where. 

More than once I have plugged it in, went to the breaker panel and managed to shut off all sorts of things before I finally got the right one.  The plug in a circuit tester/tracer, go shut of the breakers one by one is the best method, then check all the others in the room. 

Double check with a known good and working meter before touching the metal screws and wires.


Whether the outlets are all on the same circuit or not depends greatly on who wired it and what they were thinking.   Normally, you would expect all the outlets in a bedroom to be on the same circuit. In a living room or a dining room you would expect to see maybe 2 circuits. In a kitchen code says thou shalt have 2 circuits minimum.... and a home owner can request anything they want. 

Oh the things I have seen. 

Goodmorning Herb!

Jon my house was built in the mid-fifties. Incredible wood. Wood we just can't buy today.
BUT the house was rewired by my uncle....a career electrician and there is absolutely no
logic or good reasoning for any of it.
One best check each and every outlet at the breaker....and there is no way to label them..one may supply power to three different outlets in as many rooms. Insult to injury...
it's two wire.

So I updated the den during that project with a seperator ground for all the power to
the DAW.
All the major toys have their own Furman conditioners/regulators/surge protectors. They're
not cheap but they are very good.

Pffft... in our last house, which was new at the time, 1993. I could NOT get rid of an electircal buzz in everything. Part of it was GA Power. I got them to come out and stood under the lines feeding the house with an AM radio. IT would buzz like heck if I got under the lines. They shecked at the pole and replaced something there and that part of the problem was fixed HOWEVER...

That was not the worst of it. I was still getting a LOT of noise in the house when trying to record, use a radio, or even play guitar. I started to pull wall plates from the outlets and switches... EVERY ground wire was loose and they had just used the places on the outlets and switches where you push in the A/C wires... I had to go through the whole house and tighten every ground wire. That pretty much fixed it... but I was amazed at what a sloppy job had been done.

I learned about electricity in the 1950s when I was a kid. My parents had a Philco console B&W TV in the bedroom across the room at the foot of the bed. Being yound and curious, I wondered what electricity woud do to me... so I just tok the direct route to knowledge and put my finger on one of the prongs (at that time there were no three way sockets). I guess I chose the right one to put my finger on because it only knocked me across the room, into the footboard of the bed. That was all I needed to know about electricity at that time.

I recently had a squrrell learnthe hard way about electricity at my wife's office, thankfully he was hanging half out of a hole under the roofline where he had been chewing on a wire. He wont be chewing anymore wires and the hole is fixed... the wiring replaced.

You gotta love noisy power... it gives you something to do!