Identifying Non-labled Circuits.......

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

maddawg-

Member
Hello,
We are currently doing a masterplan study in a hospital and we need to identify all branch circuits. The problem is we are missing labels on about 2 per panel (167 circuits total). How would one go about finding where these circuits go...efficiently? We know how to trace back to a panel, but we have no idea where these circuits go...ie motor, receptacle,ect ect.

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks,
Scott
 
Re: Identifying Non-labled Circuits.......

You will need to invest in a good circuit tracer, this will not be one for under 100.00. (although one of these will work on some circuits)

You will need one that can trace up to 600 v

The quality you will need for hospital work will be in the $300.00 to $700.00 range, and even then, you will probably have a hard time identifying some circuits due to some bogus readings caused by hospital equipment creating their own signals.

A couple manufactures you may check out; Greenlee and Amprobe

Good luck.

Roger
 
Re: Identifying Non-labled Circuits.......

:eek: You could always turn the breaker off and hope it's not to my heart monitor. BTW Which hospital?

Greenlee #2011 range is 300ft-4miles does almost everything!
 
Re: Identifying Non-labled Circuits.......

amprobe makes a nice one, but they are about $600 or so, maybe more now I bought mine a while ago. It takes a little practice to get a feel for it, especially when a lot of sub panels are involved.
 
Re: Identifying Non-labled Circuits.......

I use the greenlee tracer kit which comes with the transmitter and reciver and connection jumpers and plugs for differant conections to trace. it will find shorts and breaks in wires too but not in metal conduit. It will tell you which breaker is feeding which circuit. The one I have does enerjized or not enerjized circuits up to 480 volts. It's a must for the trouble shooter. it will find the breaker with out turning off any circuits. This would be a big help in a hospital enviroment as you just can't start turnning off breakers. The one I have that will work hot cost about $580.00 But you can get the one that the circuit has to be off for about $250.00.

I'll try to find a link to it so you can see what I'm refering too.

Found it:
Unenergized circuit tracing

This is the one I haveEnergized circuit tracing

[ March 05, 2004, 11:31 PM: Message edited by: hurk27 ]
 
Re: Identifying Non-labled Circuits.......

Another thing to consider is that the circuits that are labeled might not be labeled correctly, and that there may be more on the circuit than the label would imply. My experience with hospitals, particularly the older ones, is that the drawings cannot be taken for granted either. It might or might not be worth the effort to pin down every load on every branch circuit. When you do your investigations, the degree of precision you should strive to attain should be driven by the purpose for which the study is being conducted. For example, on several remodeling projects, all that was necessary was to take a 30 day reading on the affected panels, and use the results to decide how much load could be added. That process did not require me to ?fill in the blanks? on the panel schedules.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top