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trouble shooting
I don't think I understand what you mean by "check a wire", either it's a complete circuit or not.
You say you already know there's only one leg of the 220 working, what more needs to be checked?
Do you mean checking the continuity of the wire, versus say a bad breaker? If so the down'n'dirty method is to just swap a another breaker and see if the problem moves with the breaker.
BTW, you have double checked that the breaker hasn't just tripped but doesn't look like it has right? Flip it all the way off & then back on.
Best of luck.
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trouble shooting
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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trouble shooting
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Any break is likely to be aboveground rather than buried. Otherwise, even if there were an instrument that pinpointed the location of a discontinuity, I'd want to replace the entire line anyway. Electricians charge a decent buck -- and there's a good reason for that.KT, you were looking for dowsing (using a divining rod).
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It's been my experience, (including two of my own broken underground lines) that most breaks are way out in the middle of the run. Either water that got in and arc'd it into an open circuit, or more often a tree growing near the line grew enough to disturb the cable.
Finding the broken spot is pretty easy with the right test equipment or a really good ohm meter.
Best of luck.
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Just remember when you are doing this in the house the panel is live so no mistakes are allowed. Electric shock is potentially fatal.
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"The method i spoke of is actually the safest way to do it."
Sorry, working on a live panel certainly doesn't sound very safe to me.
As for the "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." I thought you were an electrician?
A 220 line will give you 110 on each leg to the neutral, as such, hooking 2 pigtail sockets, each one to the neutral and one to each hot leg and sticking a plug in a socket doesn't sound nearly as dangerous as sticking a screwdriver into a live panel.
BTW, "The only safer way is to pull the house meter and turn off all power to the house." seems like a lot more work than merely flipping the main service breaker off.
Best of luck.
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trouble shooting
Did the electrician give you any clue of what caused the short?
Best of luck.
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