wiring problem

[Unregistered]

In my bedroom I have A swith to an old baseboad heater that we never use. I took the swith out and closed off the wires and placed a solid plate over it. While doing this I did not have the proper circuit breaker off and one wire poped so I TURNED OFF THE RIGHT ONE AFTER THAT. After that two outlets on the the same circuit will not work.I tested them and they are not getting any power to them.Everything else on that circuit still work(2 lights). Where do I need to start to find the answer to this.

[mdshunk]

I suspect that you blew apart a loose connection before the breaker tripped (maybe it never tripped). You'll have to start checking for loose wirenuts and bad back-stabbed receptacles. Put the wires around the screws on the receptacle and not back-stabbed. The trouble may be at the first non-working receptacle in the chain, or the last working receptacle in the chain.

[Unregistered]

I checked all the outlets and do not see any with loose wires, all seem to be fine.There does not seem to be any power coming to the original switch I took out, those wires are not hot any more either.You sad the problem could even be with the last good outlet, can you explian what I would be looking for if the outlet is working?

[suemarkp]

Your switches and receptacles are "daisy chained" from one to the other. So if a wire breaks or comes off, anything down stream of that segment won't work. The difficult thing is finding the chain of wires in the wall. You can sometimes guess if you know the rooms a circuit serves and where the power starts on that circuit.

If you have "back stabbed" receptacles and switches (holes in the back that the wires push into), those can be failing to conduct even with the wire still looking like its pushed in. Just jiggling it can make or break contact sometimes (as can pushing a cord in hard which then affects a down stream receptacle just from the pushing force). For this reason, many people don't like this style of receptacle. Others have screws on the side. Power comes in on one wire and leave on the other (the adjacent screws are in good elelctrical contact). A bad thing here would be two wires under a single screw. With one wire per screw, these work very reliably.

Somewhere, you have a cable that should be energized, but it is not. That wire is probably loose in the receptacle or switch that it connects to. Since you checked the far end (the box you were working in), you need to check it on its source end wherever that is. So you need to guess where the wire coming from the breaker box goes first on this circuit, or even better, where is the box just upstream feeding the switch box that is broken. Does that feeding receptacle or light or switch work? If so, look at the other wires in the box and see if they have power, as they probably feed things down stream. You could have two cables leaving this box, each of which split again and again down stream. Usually, an electrician will follow a wall or go to the next closest item, but you never know. In older houses, they may have gone to a ceiling fixture first and left there with three wires to other places.

A non-contact voltage tester can help with this (you touch it on or near the wire and it glows or beeps with electricity present). This only works on the hot wires and not the neutrals. You'll need to be flipping the breaker on and off a lot so you can safely pull out a receptacle, energize it to check which wires are powered, and then turn it off to put everything back.

[Unregistered]

Ok I have not worked on this for a while but I think I have checked everything on the circut that is affected.So far I have not found any loose wires.I have put the white wires together and the black wires together of the switch I first worked on that started all of this but they do not have power either. Is there somthing elese I should check or maybe I missed something along the way.

[Mr T]

As Mark mentioned..
Get one of those non-contact voltage testers.. they cost about $10. THey are about the size of a marker. HOld it near each outlet.. if there is no beeping at a outlet, go on to the next.. You can find them about anywhere....(home depot, lowes, local hardware store, even walmart if you are really desperate :eek:

Map out all the outlets that are not working. If you have a few next to a working outlet..check that one. You may also have a junction box somewhere in the attic or basement/crawl that you dont know about.

Check any rooms next to this room too. THe circuit may carry over into that room.

[Mr Fixit eh]

Do you have an accurate map of all your electrical devices/ circuits? If not, this is the time to do it. You may be missing a j-box or light, maybe in a garage or crawlspace or attic.

Nobody's talked about this yet, but if you're not 100% certain about your map, firmly shut off the breaker, then turn it on. Does the breaker instantly trip again? Do the devices work? Look for GFCI-protected receptacles and try resetting them.

Now, once you've eliminated these other possibilities, then yes, there'll be a loose connection or screw or in rare cases a broken wire.

You can narrow this down if you have a voltmeter or a cheap neon-light tester. BE CAREFULL. Shut down the breaker and *test* to make sure the power is off before you work on any device or wires. Then go back and turn the breaker back on to test/ shut the breaker off before you do any more work.

At every device and j-box test for voltage. If you have 120 volts between hot and neutral OR hot and ground, you know your hot wire connections are good, if you have 0 volts then the problem is in the hot wires, terminals, or connections, somewhere. Check the circuit breaker at the panel as well. If you have 0volts between hot/ neutral but 120 volts between hot and ground, then you know the problem is with the neutral wires, terminals, or connections.

Now I just re-read the thread. In the first post the OP says, I took the swith out and closed off the wires and placed a solid plate over it. What does, "closed off" mean? How many cables entered the old heater? What wires and colors? In the OP's second post, he/she says, So far I have not found any loose wires.I have put the white wires together and the black wires together of the switch I first worked on that started all of this but they do not have power either. Can you tell us how many cables you have coming into this switch box and where each comes/goes to? How many wires and what colors?

It appears that the power source to the heater comes through the switchbox and if the OP has wirenutted the black and white at the heater, we have a problem. The breaker should be completely tripped if that were the case.

Once we get the circuit working, there are a couple other things. If you've removed the baseboard heater, then you should make sure that power is removed from this cable. Any live terminations must be in an electrical box and capped with a wirenut.

[Unregistered]

Ok, the switch was a thermostat switch for the baseboard heater. The heater is still in place. I just unhooked the swithch and put a wire nut on each wire, 2- white 2- black and a ground. Then I wired the whites together and the blacks together but there is no power coming to that switch at all.I am pretty sure that I have tested all the wall switches and plugs, the only thing left is a light in the closet(that is working). Tomorrow I will be climbing up in the attic to look at me j-boxes.The breaker never tripped when this happened.