Ideas on circuit tracer.

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Crash117

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Nevada
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C-2 electrical contractor/owner operator
Hello all. I’ve been contacted by a customer that has a power outage problem in part of the house. It’s an old house with old 2 wire asphalt type cables. I’ve checked every opening that is without power and many that are still have power but have been unable to find any type of common factor. After there any tracers out there that use a battery to generate a signal that I can trace through walls? I could back feed power through the non working area but would really rather not due to the unknown nature of why power is not currently working. Any ideas on tracers would be helpful. Thanks in advance.
 
No joke, I saw one on Temu less than a week ago. And also no joke, trying to get ahold of a tracer that will read behind plaster....I don't know.

Best I ever saw was a GB (of all brands) non contact with an adjustable sensitivity. I was able to fiddle with the sensitivity enough to get a good read on a Romex in a sheetrock wall.

Isn't that house gonna be about the age where they would have run through lights, drop down a couple of times, and run in the walls a bit, too? A mix of ceiling and wall wiring?

I would be looking in the lights for a bad taped up connection, or in the attic for squirrel damage.

But it's also possible you have an open splice buried in a wall
 
Plug an extension cord into a working, known-properly-wired, non-GFCI-protected receptacle, and carry the female end around with you. Use a solenoid tester to test for voltages between the cord's hot slot and the bad circuit's neutral, and between the cord's neutral slot and the circuit's hot.
 
Any other ideas on types of dead wire tracers would be helpful. I’ve only ever used tracers on live circuits
 
ptonsparky said:
Fox and Hound.

CTX30 by Triplett. or similar
Click to expand...
Got Triplett 3388 Fox and Hound, will trace even through shallow concrete so pretty good and works on live wires. Got it originally because got tired of the guys "accidentally" hooking my old tracers onto live lines, burning them up. A little pricier than others but has been more than worth it not having to replace a cheaper one multiple times. Was also pleasantly surprised to the depth of the tracing it could do.
 
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