If the only approach suitable to a situation is turning off breakers, then you should know about the 'binary search'. This minimizes the number of trips necessary to locate a breaker.
At the panel you turn off _half_ the possible breakers, and check the state of the circuit. This eliminates half of the breakers as a possibility at each trip between panel and circuit. For 30 breakers this means 5 trips.
Not the ideal method; circuit tracers are probably better but if you are forced to use the 'flip breakers' technique this helps minimize the trips.
You can also use this technique to _map_ all of the outlets to circuits. You number your breakers in binary and check the entire panel '1 bit' at a time.
Say you have 64 breakers. You number them 000000, 000001, 000010, ..., 111111.
Now you start with the leftmost bit. Every breaker with a 0 in the left most position gets turned off.
Go through the house and at each outlet label anything on with a 1, anything off with a 0.
Go back to the panel, and look at the second to the left bit. Every breaker with a 0 in the second left position should be off, with a 1 should be on.
Go through the house and at each outlet add the next digit to the label, 1 for on, 0 for off.
Continue these steps for a total of 6 times. At the end of this _every_ outlet will be labeled with a binary number that corresponds to the circuit breaker controlling it.
(Tedious, but systematic. It gets everything. Unless two circuits are crossed. *sniff*)
-Jon
