ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area circuit tracers

Had a 1970's ranch home with no power to the bedroom outlets,that were NOT fed from the basement.Turned out an outside outlet had
bad connections.Thing is this outlet was on the other end of the home!
Is there a good circuit tracer that senses
through drywall? I wasted alot of time using
my Fluke Meter trouble shooting this problem.

Rob:
I have a Greenlee #2007 circuit tracer I keep in my truck for just these kind of problems. I have used this model for about 5 years and it works good. I have even located cable buried underground 30" deep. It saves me a lot of time in these situations. I will admit it is a little pricey though, about $390 list at Grainger.

A somewhat cheaper (but less capable) alternative is a toner and probe set used for telecommunications work. I use a Harris Pro2000:
http://www.sacramentoelectronics.com/harris/pro2000.html

Kill the power, and clip the toner on one end of the run you want to trace. The probe can then follow the wire through standard walls, floors, and ceilings with little problem. Works best with NM and K+T, but with earphones or a quiet work area you can trace BX or MC runs. Metal conduit it can't do, unfortunately.

I use an Ideal ABS (Almost Butt Set) 62-180 tester, with a signal probe built in. I was able to find hidden (plastered over)sconce boxes with soldered clusters in them by attaching my signal generator to the old wires and moving the probe end over the wall in the general area where I figured the sconces would be.

Listened for the increase in volume (due to the clusters of wires) and popped a hole. Presto.

Also have used a 61-510 type "circuit identifier" that works reasonable well, but requires some fine tuning occasionally.

Tried to link just to the products, but try this instead:
http://www.idealindustries.com/index.htm

The ABS is under Products>Datacomm/LANTEK
The Circuit Identifier is under http://www.idealindustries.com/tm/ElectricalTesters.nsf/ElectricalTesters?OpenFrameSet