On Sun, 7 Jun 2009 10:52:15 -0400, "MiamiCuse"
wrote:


Thanks.

My older dryer no longer works, and it has the molded outlet plug. I have a
new dryer laying around in the new (being remodeled house) so I figure I
will move that here but the plug does not work.

I did not check to see if the outlet is working, in other words, it may be
broken so that's why the old dryer does not start. I am trying to figure
out how I can determine if that outlet has current.

By taking the probes of a meter and holding only the plastic parts and
sticking them into every combination of two of the holes in the
outlet.

Outlets have voltage, not current unless something is plugged into
them and turned on.

Put your meter on the AC voltage setting, and if your meter doesn't
have autoranging, and most don't, put it on a setting that goes to 240
volts or higher.

You own, iirc a pretty expensive house and you do repairs all the
time. It's time for you to by a volt-ohmmeter. (OH, below I see that
you do.) Often called multimeter. You can get by with a 15 or 20
dollar digital meter from Radio Shack with auto polarity, or from
Harbor Frieght for 4 or 5 dollars. Home Depot has something for 15
dollrs too. Come to think, the Harbor Freight meter only goes up to
200 AC. You won't burn it out with 240 I think, but you won't get a
good reading either.

For this you can use a neon test light, with two leads attached. If
it lights up, it's over 50 volts AC and a dryer receptacle will either
be good or zero, not likely anything in between. Stray voltages as
have been discussd here are not enough to light a neon light.


The only thing that
plugs into it is my dryer and it won't start. I am not sure which circuit
it is (some of mine are not labeled).

Are all your breakers ON. If it's 240 and it is, it will have 2
breakers harnessed together. Or it will be twice as wide as most of
the other breakers, same thign.

I have a multimeter that can check voltage on a regular outlet (120v) but I
plugged that into the dryer outlet and get nothing.but I am not sure the
pins are sticking all the way in correctly.

What scale is your meter on. Has to be over the voltage of the
receptacle. Though if you had a needle meter, yuu could watch the
needle fly over all the way to the right. It probably woudn't break
the meter if it was set on 200 and was actually 220.

Does this possibly broken dryer have a mechanical timer? Does it
move? Can you put your ear to the thing and hear the clock running.

If digital, it's probalby rather new and rather expensive. Is there a
circuit drawn on the back or inside and does it list a fuse.

So I think I need to determine if my dryer outlet is working or not, and I
don't know how to do that with the older dryer not working and the new dryer
not pluggable. If I can test that then I can check with breaker and that
would tell me the amp for that circuit. I think it's 30amp.

Use a neon test light, from radio shack and almost certainly in the
electric tool part of Home Depot. Harbor Freight has a set of three
of them or something, all diffferent, that I bought but haven't used
yet. One has a sharp point for piercing wire insulation.


If the one that's there now is broken and unreparable, rather than
just take the plug you could take the whole cord. Probably easy to
interchange cords.