No kidding!When did 35 years become and "old house"?
QO & type CH were fairly new then, replacing XO, 1959-60 seem to be the death throws for XO based on dates on equipment or date of construction.LOL ... Own house is 50 YO this year with QO breakers.
do I need to replace those with 'modern' homeline breakers?
I believe QO was introduced around 1957, so that time frame is probably right. You could get XO breakers from Square D into the early 70s but by the late 70s even Cutler Hammer had stopped offering them.
I bought a SQ D XO120 for $8 back in the seventies, huge money then. Was told at the supply house that SQ D tooled up once a year to make them, if my memory serves me there was no listing for them either.
Not quite following. Yes, that's a good way to tell if an outlet in energized - I use a piezo sound generator. But how to get from there to grouping the wires ?
When it has a lot of old wiring that needs work.When did 35 years become an "old house"?
Use a flasher, a large incandescent lamp, and a clamp-on ammeter.
Well, evidently the home inspector did flag the water heater as not working. Fortunately, for the owners, they didn't call a plumber before I figured this out. The screwy wiring was probably not done by the original electrician, but by the plumber who installed the tankless unit. I simply deleted one of the two 3-way switches and capped off one of the travelers (at both ends) and the other traveler became a hot.
Still not following ... Yeah, I get I'll use a clamp-on ammeter. Turn on one (and only one) of the breakers and see current flowing; see which neutral also has current flowing (with the same ammeter). Later on, when one of the other breakers produces current in the same neutral, I know it's the other side of the MWBC. Still not sure what the flasher does ...
Seriously! I often work on homes built in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. To me "old" is 1920s, or older. LOL!When did 35 years become and "old house"?
Think of it as a turn-signal flasher for 120v.
I get that it helps you tell if a circuit (or receptacle) is energized, from a distance. I still don't see how that helps in grouping the 3 conductors (neutral and hopefully-opposite phase hots) in an MWBC. At least if you do it by the method I described above in post #26. Maybe there's a better method ?
It works best with a analog clamp on meter, as the lamp flashes you will see the needle move slightly.
Use a 250-watt bulb. The needle will dance up & down over a 2-amp range. You won't have any difficulty seeing that on a 15- or 20-amp circuit.
So I see pulsating current on the neutral, got it. Ah well, it seems to be unavailable. One of those "toner" widgets should do it though.
