Fixing lost neutral

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GerryB

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Location
woodbridge, ct. USA
Had a job today a customer had a circuit not working and it was a lost neutral. (where do those guys go?) When I have one of these I ground out the neutral to see if it restores everything and then try to find it or refeed it. In this case there was a basement light 20' from the panel involved so I ran a 14-2 from the light to the panel, hooked up the ground and neutral and all was well. I was thinking maybe I should splice the hot in also at the light and tape it in the panel, or change the hot in the panel and tape the removed wire, (since that would be backfed), or put both wires to the breaker, (then the circuit would be fed 2 different ways). How do some of you deal with this? What I did took almost two hours. To actually find the problem would have involved moving furniture, 10 or 12 switches, recess lights, hanging lights, and surface lights.
 
IMO you could have a violation based on 300.3(B) especially if there is armored cable involved. I would find the old circuit and disconnect it
 
I find the neutral, no matter what I've got to move or take apart. The reason is that if the neutral is "lost" out of a wire nut, then it's still got a bad connection. Back feeding would then only be a temporary fix. What happens when the rest of the connection fails?


I only do this sort of work by the hour. I simply tell the customer that fixing the problem will only take 2 or 3 minutes.
Finding the problem, however, could take a while. Sorry, can't promise any final bill, or give anything better than an educated guess as to how long it'll take to repair. And that a guess in no way implies time allotment.

But I guarantee that I'll fix it, or there is no charge - not one cent

That way, they have confidence that I will get it fixed, and they completely understand the hourly nature concerning money. And I know that I can take the time I need to fix it properly
 
GerryB said:
Had a job today a customer had a circuit not working and it was a lost neutral. (where do those guys go?) When I have one of these I ground out the neutral to see if it restores everything and then try to find it or refeed it. In this case there was a basement light 20' from the panel involved so I ran a 14-2 from the light to the panel, hooked up the ground and neutral and all was well. I was thinking maybe I should splice the hot in also at the light and tape it in the panel, or change the hot in the panel and tape the removed wire, (since that would be backfed), or put both wires to the breaker, (then the circuit would be fed 2 different ways). How do some of you deal with this? What I did took almost two hours. To actually find the problem would have involved moving furniture, 10 or 12 switches, recess lights, hanging lights, and surface lights.
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So you ran a 14-2 to the basement light. Connect hot, neutral and ground at both ends, the panel & fixture. Abandon the old feed. Then you say ...

To actually find the problem would have involved moving furniture, 10 or 12 switches, recess lights, hanging lights, and surface lights.[/QUOTE]

So if your fix didn't correct the problem why was it done ?
I think James L has the right approach.
 
I feel uneasy about abandoning the original feed without knowing where the other end is and disconnecting it there.
If the neutral is also open at that point, then either another load is not working or there is a wire at a j-box that will appear to be usable in the future and is not.

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GoldDigger said:
I feel uneasy about abandoning the original feed without knowing where the other end is and disconnecting it there.
If the neutral is also open at that point, then either another load is not working or there is a wire at a j-box that will appear to be usable in the future and is not.

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I couldn't agree more.

If it works at point A, does not work at point B or C, but re-feeding it at point C makes B and C work,
then there is still a current carrying conductor, somehow associated with point B, that is open

If it takes two neutral conductors from opposite directions to make all the lights work right, but only one hot is needed, there is still an issue left unresolved.

I'd have to say I don't like it.
 
GerryB said:
Had a job today a customer had a circuit not working and it was a lost neutral. (where do those guys go?) When I have one of these I ground out the neutral to see if it restores everything and then try to find it or refeed it. In this case there was a basement light 20' from the panel involved so I ran a 14-2 from the light to the panel, hooked up the ground and neutral and all was well. I was thinking maybe I should splice the hot in also at the light and tape it in the panel, or change the hot in the panel and tape the removed wire, (since that would be backfed), or put both wires to the breaker, (then the circuit would be fed 2 different ways). How do some of you deal with this? What I did took almost two hours. To actually find the problem would have involved moving furniture, 10 or 12 switches, recess lights, hanging lights, and surface lights.
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Trouble shooting should not be that hard.

Once you know which circuit you are dealing with see how much of the circuit is still working ( lights & receptacles). Normally the problem is in the last one still working or the first one not working in that circuit. Either a back stabbed receptacle or a loose wire nut in a junction box.

A circuit signal tracer will normally find a complete break pretty quick. I find buried boxes and flying splices all the time where the wiring has come loose.
 
growler said:
Trouble shooting should not be that hard.

Once you know which circuit you are dealing with see how much of the circuit is still working ( lights & receptacles). Normally the problem is in the last one still working or the first one not working in that circuit. Either a back stabbed receptacle or a loose wire nut in a junction box.

A circuit signal tracer will normally find a complete break pretty quick. I find buried boxes and flying splices all the time where the wiring has come loose.
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Yes, it usually is in one of those spots. I have done that many times but not with a signal tracer. What is a good signal tracer to buy. All I have is the plug in to find the breaker.
 
GerryB said:
Yes, it usually is in one of those spots. I have done that many times but not with a signal tracer. What is a good signal tracer to buy. All I have is the plug in to find the breaker.
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Depends on how much money you want to spend and what you intend to do with it.

If you only need to look for breaks in wiring behind sheetrock walls almost any type of circuit tracer will do. If you are looking for breaks in concrete walls or in conduit or underground then get set to spend more money.

Ideal and Amprobe both make good products but are a bit pricey.

For little jobs like this they sell a little unit at HD or Lowes for around $60 that will do the job ( if you know how to use it). Fox and hound type. I can't find it right now so I don't remember the brand name. I waited until I could find a used amprobe model from a contractor going out of business ( they have to sell to someone ).

Finding a break behind a sheetrock wall is not hard it's all about getting used to whatever equipment you are useing.
 
I know that saying "I just don't like it" isn't a good enough reason by itself. But to sum up a potential problem, saying "I don't like it" can fully express a thought in just a few words. I laid out concerns in a previous post, as did others (including you), and I was simply expressing the sum of all my concerns.

Also, can someone not have legitimate concerns, based on relevant experience, which may not be "officially" violating a rule?

I wonder how many people said "I don't like it" back in the 1930s when they were twisting and taping a knob-and-tube splice that they knew would be inaccessible after the plaster went on? There wasn't anything "wrong" with it from an official standpoint. But they could foresee the potential problems

How many said "I don't like it" back in the 1960s when the ground and neutral of a home run were under the same lug screw?
How many said "I don't like it" in the 1980s when an oven or dryer frame was bonded to the neutral wire of the home run.

All of those scenarios still exist today in various houses, and are plenty acceptable to an inspector today because it was acceptable at the time of installation. But apparently enough people didn't like them, because they aren't allowed today


Also, if I were an inspector, I might possibly have no inclination to even conceive that someone would propose to make a repair that would still leave a safety concern. I would probably pull the chain on the porcelain lampholder and see if the bulb came on.

However, considering that I was brought up in the trade by people who's primary concern was to extract as much money from the customer, while shelling out as little labor as possible, I know better than to judge it only from an inspector's vantage point. I have explicit memories of "repairs" I've made by:

robbing a neutral from another circuit
fixing a shorted hot wire by using the white for hot and using the bare for a neutral
flying splices I've hidden in a wall
cutting the thermal coupler out of a can light because it was cycling. One boss said we were replacing it with a "tan" thermal coupler

I thank God that I've learned a whole lot since those days 20 years ago, to look at potential problems instead of just whether or not the light turns on
Looking at it from an inspector's standpoint isn't always going to reveal the whole story
 
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Dennis Alwon said:
I would find the old circuit and disconnect it
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jxofaltrds said:
Agreed plus you have created a safety hazard and probably have introduced EMFs into the home.
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I also agree. The only way to abandon an un-used cable is to disconnect both ends.

We know that it could be just a back stabbed receptacle that came loose. "But" it could be a cable that's rubbing against a water pipe or AC duct. It's is a possible safety hazard and the only way to know for sure is to find it.

Also when he finds the break he will see how easy it would have been just to repair it ( good training).
 
As the OP here let me add a few comments. I appreciate all the replies. I did not expect anyone to say "I do that all the time!" I do not do this all the time either, as a matter of fact I get these calls often, maybe because I also have property managers with section 8 housing, and 95% of the time I figure it out. In one way I think it is about comfort level. James L had an interesting list of past practices and questionable things we all have done or encountered. In this case I checked some switches and an outlet on the first floor and then found the basement light near the panel. Each location fixed the problem when grounded out and I felt comfortable refeeding in the basement. Actually I think I felt more comfortable with this then with some fixtures I've changed in old houses with insulation that you don't know how it stays on. And I know guys who won't touch that stuff either. Again, it's a comfort level thing whether or not you change the box and maybe mess up the ceiling. But I will be remembering these posts the next time I get this call. In retrospect the switches I checked had spliced neutrals and the outlet had wires terminated on the screws, no splices, so it is quite possible I could have found the problem without taking down fixtures. And I did mention to the HO that I might have to start taking things apart. So again all the comments will be heeded and I already looked at some circuit tracing tools (big price range Growler). Kinda interesting the post following mine is "bare neutral in conduit":happyno:
 
GerryB said:
So again all the comments will be heeded and I already looked at some circuit tracing tools (big price range Growler). Kinda interesting the post following mine is "bare neutral in conduit":happyno:
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you can dump between $1,000 to $1,500 in a high end tracer, and they aren't the be all and end all....
i've got two of them, and the one i'm most partial to is the ampropbe 326B, that magically jumped
a third in price the day after fluke bought them.:rant::rant::rant:

imagine that! musta been a fluke or something.

it won't do everything, but what it does, it does well. i'm more partial to it than the high digit ideal.
i usually only crack out the ideal when the amprobe won't get me there..... it won't inject signals
into open wires, but if you want to trace something, and can separate the hot and neutral so they
don't cancel out, it's insanely good. one of the ways i get a path home is to take one lead and
ground it to a wet sponge on a concrete floor... it'll usually pull enough current to make the thing work.

but the 326B has been around for 20+ years without changes, and there is a good reason for it.
i'd be looking on ebay for one in the $300~$500 range... new, they are about $1,400. they were
$850 list until fluke bought them.
 
GerryB said:
I was thinking maybe I should splice the hot in also at the light and tape it in the panel, or change the hot in the panel and tape the removed wire, (since that would be backfed), or put both wires to the breaker, (then the circuit would be fed 2 different ways).How do some of you deal with this?
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GerryB said:
Each location fixed the problem when grounded out and I felt comfortable refeeding in the basement. :happyno:
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Gerry the original post did not sound very confident ( maybe even confused ).

The fact that you could re-feed the neutral at the basement light and the whole rest of the circuit started to work should have told you something. Either you just replaced the home-run neutral or the end of the line neutral. A break at any other placed would have ment something that was still not working.

Now if the the light in the basement were the home run, and easy enough to figure out. Check for a break in the wire going from the light and the panel by wire nutting the hot and neutral in the panel and test for continuity at the fixture. If this is the home run you disconnect the old cable and abandon it and hook up the hot, neutral and ground of the new cable. You have replaced the bad section of cable and disconnected at both ends and it is no longer live.

It's true that we have all done things that were not correct in the past. Trouble-shooting and repair is a learning experience. I have been doing this for 40 years and did many things in those early years that I wouldn't even think of doing now. The more you learn the less comfortable you feel.
 
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The way I read the OP description, a subset of the outlets on the original circuit did not work and refeeding the basement light neutral and leaving the original circuit neutral connected restored operation of the entire circuit.
If nothing is done to the hot, you have hot and neutral following different paths.
If you also refeed the hot and do nothing else you have non-compliant parallel conductors.
If you refeed the hot and break the existing hot at the exact point where the neutral was interrupted, then you might as well fix the neutral instead!

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