Hey guys. Hope you can help me.
I have a home that definitely has a buried junction box in the drywall. The wires are live and are feeding a chandelier and pot lights. Some load, but not a huge amount.
Its an expensive home and I don't want to start poking holes in the drywall.
Thermal gun? I spoke to a person in the field and he said it wouldn't pick it up unless there was a massive load or bad connection creating a lot of heat.
Any suggestions for electronic tracing devices?
Thanks in advance
You may want to check this out.....
http://www.amprobe.com/Amprobe/usen/Products/Wire-Tracers.htmI had some success with the old model back in the day. Note that I say 'some'.
Could you drop the trims in the recess fixtures??
If it's a metal junction box that's buried a stud finder should have some reaction.
Generally it detects the increased density of the wood but there's a chance that it would also give some lesser indication when it encounters a metal box between studs.
Once you narrow it down you can drill a small hole and look inside the wall with a borescope to try to get the exact location.
I had a job that was very similar to this some years back.
Not wanting to buy a proper metal detector, I made up a small oscillator that had a coil of wire on a plastic former attached to it, after some initial workshop testing, I took out to the job, long story short, it took a matter of seconds to find the offending joint.
It's pretty poor form joining stuff in a wall though, all the same.
I love my tone tracer! It even works with wires inside Bergmann conduit (Orangeburg pipe with a thin outer coating of sheet metal, not earthed) in plastered brick walls. I only have a rather inexpensive one, 85 Euros. Allowed me to spot a buried splice +/- 1 cm! Some moron moved a door (and light switch) by just splicing new wires to the old cloth-covered ones and plastering over the old switch box. I found the splice, patched in a new section of flex conduit instead of the box, pulled new wires through the now complete conduit run and that was it.
Yes the Amp detector worked well for me
lesk
Welcome to ECN from another Jersey guy....