post DIY electrical problem


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Old 10-23-16, 07:40 PM
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Exclamation post DIY electrical problem

Hi everyone

I ran into an issue after doing a small electrical DIY project :

I changed all receptacles and switches in my house and now one of the circuits is down all together.

*The circuit breaker is on and I can detect electricity going past the circuit breaker
*I can not detect electricity in any of the poles in any of the switches in that single circuit
*There are only light fixtures in this circuit
*There are a couple of 3 way switches in this circuit
*There are no GFCIs or any other receptacles

any help is greatly appreciated
 
  #2  
Old 10-23-16, 08:22 PM
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Way to little information to even guess. Is every light and receptacle on the breaker dead or only a few?
I can detect electricity going past the circuit breaker
Hopefully you are not using a non contact tester. They can not be used for actually checking for voltage. To check for voltage you need to use a multimeter, preferably analog not digital (or a neon test light or a solenoid voltage detector).
 
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Old 10-23-16, 10:04 PM
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Every light and receptacle on the breaker is dead.
I used a neon lamp test light to ckeck if there is any current running
 
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Old 10-23-16, 11:09 PM
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It sounds like the trouble is in the first box from the breaker that power goes to. If it is a GFCI you need to try to reset it otherwise you need to remove all wire nuts and redo the connections. Any back stabbed wires need to be moved to the screws. If every thing is still dead then you probably have an incorrect connection. There should be one black hot in and one black (hot) out. Those two wires need to be connected together for the down stream receptacles to work. You need to make sure you didn't mix up the black wires.

Note: If there was a mixture of wires on the screws and back stabs the mistake I described is quite common. If you have wires on both the back stab and the screw of the same terminal it is a good idea to immediately connect those two wires to a pigtail when you remove them so they don't get mixed up.
 

Last edited by ray2047; 10-24-16 at 04:01 PM.
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Old 10-24-16, 11:40 AM
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Thanks a lot Ray, will try this
 
 

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