On Oct 25, 8:47 am, Mike Dobony wrote:
I have a dead outlet, but no breakers are tripped. Is there a way to trace
these unpowered circuits? I have a circuit tracer, but it only works on
powered lines. Thanks.
..
Good ideas in other posts.

How do you know junctions are in the ceiling?
Do rooms have ceiling lights that are used as j-boxes?
Were some ceiling lights remodeled over?
What I am reading is that outlets only have one circuit/2 wires coming
in and connected to the receptacle. No wires going out.
Wiring method (romex, EMT, knob & tube, ...)? EMT or rigid pipe may
make the circuit hard to trace with an electrical tester but may be
traceable with a metal detector.

With 3 receptacles dead the problem is probably not in the middle of a
wiring run (unless you have knob and tube).

I would check the outlet(s) with a neon test light with 2 leads.
From your description it should not light up when connected H-N.
If there is a ground does it light up H-G?
With the*neon* light tester if you touch one of the test leads and
touch a hot wire with the other lead the light will glow very faintly
(try it on a good outlet). You can check if the hot wire is connected
(or just use the extension cord below).
With an extension cord to a working outlet and a bulb in a pigtail
socket you can test extension neutral to dead circuit. If the bulb
lights you have a connected hot wire.
If there is no connected hot wire you can test extension hot to dead
circuit. If the bulb lights you have a connected neutral. You can also
test the ground, if any.

If one of the wires (hot or neutral) is continuous you can connect
your circuit tracer from that wire to the appropriate wire in the
extension cord. That puts the signal on one of the wires you want to
trace. (It also puts the signal on the circuit the extension is
plugged into. You have to interpret the results to account for that.)
You can test in the panel and see which circuit the dead outlets are
on. That may give clues where to look depending on what else is on
that circuit
With luck you can trace the wires in the wall. Or see if the wire goes
through j-boxes.
If you trace all 3 outlets you can see where the wires come together.
That is probably where there is a bad splice in the wires that are
open which you are not tracing.

Some of the above is hazardous. I assume you are reasonably competent.

Tone tracers, which several posts have mentioned, might work. It is a
common piece of equipment for phone techs, if you know one. I haven’t
used one to trace power wires. It should be connected to an open wire.
The tracer looks for an electric field from the wire being traced.
(The tracer above looks for a magnetic field from the wire being
traced.)

To state the obvious, if the wiring might be in an attic searching
there may be useful.

Toward the end of possibilities you can put holes in the wall and look
in with a mirror flexibly attached to the end of a stick (a common
tool). You can follow the wire. With careful use of flashlight and
mirror you can look in the whole cavity (if there is no insulation).
This is obviously a major PITA. Tracing this kind of problem is a
PITA.

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