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trouble shooting
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any and all electric experts.is there a way to check a wire that runs from the house to a garage underground for a break. i had service put in may 2008. the 10/3 wire, everything has been fine till 11-29-09. when i checked the panel inside the garage i only had one leg of 220. inside the house at the garage breaker i had 220v. is there a simple way to find if a wire is broken or not and where its broken at.this isunderground service that crosses a driveway and sidewalk by the house.dont know if theres something i can rent or only a electrican would have for this job. i just dont want to dig more than i have too. the guy i used lives in another state.
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From your description it sounds like you have a broken "hot" conductor. If you 220V at the breaker feeding the garage but only 120V at the garage then that is the problem.
To find the problem take all the "hot" wires off in both the house and garage. There should be a black wire and a red wire on your breaker that feeds the garage. Find the bare copper that is in the same cable going to the garage.
Do the house first to prevent a shock.
Join one wire at a time (either black or red) to the bare copper. Once one wire is connected to the bare copper go out to the garage and use an OHM meter (Usually looks like an upside down horseshoe on the meter). touch one lead to the bare copper and one lead to the color you had just connected inside the house. If your meter needle moves or your hear a beep (depending on your meter) that wire is good.
Repeat the process with the other colored wire and you will find which one is broken.When the needle stops moving or you no longer hear the beep you have found your broken wire.
Just remember when you are doing this in the house the panel is live so no mistakes are allowed. Electric shock is potentially fatal.
This usually works best if you have someone to help you. Get them to touch the hot and copper together. When you notice the movement or beep call out to have them separate the wires. Then re-touch to confirm you have the right set of wires.
I'm not an expert but do have apprx 20 yrs as electrician. Hope this helps.
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trouble shooting
There is a circuit tracer but it usually for finding a circuit in panel. I don't know if it would work for finding a fault underground. Don't know if anyone has ever tried.
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Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like an incredibly dangerous way to do it, even for someone who can read between the typos and knows a bit about electricity. A MUCH safer way to do it would be to wire a 220 volt plug to 2 pigtail light sockets with bulbs and just plug it in. If you don't have, and don't want to buy, 2 pigtail sockets, use a split duplex receptacle instead and just plug a trouble lamp or something into one then the other socket.If both the bulb that doesn't come on is hooked to the bad circuit. No risk, no guessing, no burning anything down, no meter required.
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The method i spoke of is actually the safest way to do it. The only safer way is to pull the house meter and turn off all power to the house.Rigging up some homemade contraption to test 240V with 120V light bulbs sounds like someone is going to get a shock or get broken glass flying everywhere.
The method I described is much safer than pulling breakers out of a live panel. and swapping them out. Many panels have bolt in breakers and need an insultaed screw driver to install them safely. This is because they bolt in to the live bus bars of the panel. Touch the shaft of the driver and you get the whole power coming to the house.
I'va also seen breakers shatter as they are being removed causing the screw driver to short from the bus bars to the back of the panel. Again with the full power to the house going to the screw driver and arcing to ground.
My suggetsion to KT is to replace the breakers. Some have been found to be faulty. One brand in particular lost there ULC rating because a 15 amp breaker did not trip until well over the 15 amp allowable limit. Needles to say the risk of fire in this case is outrageous. KT should talk to his friendly neighborhood electrician about this. Either that or PM me and i will emlighten him as to what i know about the subject.
If a meter gets pulled the local utility comoany would want to know why the seal is broken. If they don't have a record of a call to tell them why they might get upset. Some are very territorial about things like that.
As for meters they are a cheap investment. A decent one is only a few bucks a the local hardware store. Granted my meter I paid a good dollar for but I need mine do do a lot more than just read 120 and 240V.
The best way to find a break is to think back about what was done in the area. Was any landscaping done? Or renovations to the house? Was the driveway plowed by somebody else and the conduit hit? this the type of stuff that causes a wire to break. VERY rarely does a wire break underground. The only time i have heard of naything like this was when conduit was not installed correctly and the ground heaved due to frost. The conduit that was not glued basically cut the cable.
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