Electric tool question

DownSouth

Member
May be a dumb question, but figured I would ask anyway.
Our old house was built in the 40"s and had been added on to a time or two since. We"ve been in it for 8 years now and I"ve yet to take the time to try to mark all the breakers in the breaker boxes and the one old original fuse box. I have marked a few by trial and error when having to shut down somthing for a repair but that"s is. Is there a tool that can be put on wire, or near a switch or in an outlet that would beep or send a signal back to the fuse box to tell me what is what so I could finally get them all marked? A link to what I need online would be very helpful. As with most folks these days the wallet is not bottomless!
 
Also check out Reliance Controls THP110 Digital Circuit Breaker Finder. It's basically the same tester as the Triplett except it only costs $33. I have one and used it for my entire house and then loaned it to my brother to do his house. It works perfectly.
 
Hello downsouth,
How about plugging in a radio? Set the volume so you can hear it, and mark the breakers.
Thats an electric tool isn't it? Just kidding!
I mark mine with numbers, it works for me.
Guido.
 
Connect a portable radio to the outlet in question, and flip the breakers, or unscrew the fuses one at a time till the radio stops playing. Simple, cheap, - you probably have a radio already... And yes, I know, backwards. But it works.
 
with roots in the telecom world - I always use a tone generator with an inductive pickup.

Puts a wobbling tone on the line and you can poke around with the the pickup to pickout the wires at the other end without going down to bare metal.

Very handy - you'd want the circuit to be dead of course.

They probably even sell them at home depot these days. No idea what they cost.
 
The tone generator sounds like an interesting option, but I thought they were stricltly for low volatage, correct me if I'm wrong. I assume that's why you say the line should be dead. That would indeed work for what I want to do. Others mentioned a radio. I've done that before and it works pretty good if your close enough to hear the radio. The breaker boxes to this old place are in a workshop that is attached to the house and it would work fine for some of the closer rooms but I'm afraid I'll never hear it in the distant rooms. That and the fact the wiring out to the barn is run underground from the house, no way to ever hear the radio out there. PO had a washer and dryer in the barn at one time and there are 3 sets of Romex running up the barn wall. When I added some lighting to a storage area in the barn, I ran an extension cord from the barn to the house with a drop light on it to figure out which breaker I needed to kill and that turned out to be one of the old screw in fuses.
I've now come to the conclusion I need to pinpoint everthing and mark in the boxes what is what. I like the number idea too, just have a laminated piece of paper nearby with the numbers corosponding to what each breaker feeds. Earlier this year we had a lightning strike either nearby or on the house. All the lights flashed and the surge protectors did their jobs as we lost nothing electronic but about 10 minutes after the strike we could smell smoke. No way to pinpoint where it was coming from and then I could see some smoke at the ceiling in a center room. I killed all the breakers and called the fire department (volunteer). They said their was a night light on in the center rooms and asked if I indeed did cut off all the breakers. Sure enough I forgot the screw in fuses so I now know where at least one of those goes! The chief had a heat sensor and found a hot wall in another room. I felt the wall and his sensor was right. He offered to open the wall, I said go for it. There was a wall outlet that had partially melted along with several feet of wire. It burnt the paper on the sheetrock and smoked the stud pretty good, it seems I may have killed the power just in time. He pulled out a piece of wire and took a close look at it. It seem at some point in time the PO had spliced into a wire to add the outlet. The original house wire is the old cloth coverd wire (no ground) and he added a few feet of lamp cord and electrical tape to run to the outlet. I ended up capping off the old cloth covered wire prior to the half azz splice and eliminated the outlet completely, but have never done anything else other than close the wall back up but not finished. This is why I want to narrow some of this hodgepodge mess down so I can begin getting rid of the old unsafe stuff on a shoestring budget. If I had the money I would hire an electrician and be done with it, but it's just not that way.
 
This is not the answer you are wanting to hear. But, from what you are describing your place is long overdue for a rewire. The lightning strike was a nice wake up call, enabling you to find the bad "fix" in the wall. Can you get in the attic to inspect what is there?

I would do whatever you can to replace all of the old cloth covered stuff. It's started to deteriorate and I'm afraid you will keep on finding things like the splice.

A tone and probe set will not really do what you want unless you kill the main breakers and all power to the house. Electrical wiring is often daisy chained and go to many places. Telephone wiring is usually one wire to each jack so the tone only goes to one location. Often times you can find the tone going all over the place. The circuit breaker finders work pretty well, as others have indicated. There are several different brands, all do the same thing. In order to label everything accurately you are going to have to plug a light or radio or whatever into each outlet and use phones or the little inexpensive walkie talkies and spend a day turning things on and off because each breaker/fuse may go to several places.

Bottom line is you have a potentially dangerous situation with all of that old wiring compounded by whatever previous tenants have done to it.
 
I've got a two piece gadget that works nice for what you're talking about. The transmitter plugs into an outlet and sends a signal on that circuit. Back at the breaker box, the receiver has a wand that you can chase down the signal with. Sometimes it will only get you within a breaker or two, but when you switch off the right breaker, it kills the tone and then you're certain. The transmitter also has some adapters to connect to open wiring, say in a junction box or light circuit. Mine is a Gardner-Bender. Here's a link.
Gardner Bender GET 1200
 
Why not use a couple of long extension cords and a trouble light or radio. Set the light or radio next to the fuse box and run the cords back to the plugins.
 
I bought a set that has a sender that plugs into a live circuit and you take the receiver to to the breaker/fuse panel. You then place the receiver on a breaker/fuse until it beeps. The receiver must be adjusted for sensitivity so it only picks up the signal when you touch the correct breaker/fuse. It cost around $30. I forgot the brand name. I use it quite a bit as I have 4 rent houses.
 

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