Cant find garage breaker

[jicjoc]

Hi,
We bought a new house this yr. 1959 built with attached garage.
200amp breaker box in basement. No other breaker box.
When i turn this box off, every fuse, i still have power in my garage!

I have a klein tool circuit breaker finder... doesn't light up on any breaker when transmitter plugged into garage...

Where is the breaker for my garage? Can there be none? Can it be at my main meter?

The garage doesnt have gfci outlets, so i want to add that... also want to add new outlet for garage dppr opener etc, new light fixtures but cant turn the power off to it...

My guy cant come for such a small job til after ...
Thanks for tips and advice pls

 

[The Cobbler]

I would hope someone didn't tie into the main coming in to the house without protection.
first thing I would pull the cover off your panel & see if there is anything attached to the mains
normally in Ontario we don't have outside breakers
have you turned the main breaker off and see what it does ?

 

[sparky 1971]

It's probably double fed from two circuits on the same phase. It happens, but I don't really see how someone could do it that didn't involve his head up his rear. I run into it more often than I should.

Turn off all of the breakers one at a time without turning them back on. Eventually, the garage wool go out. Now, turn them back on, one at a time. You already should know what you think is the garage breaker, leave that one off. I'm willing to bet that as you go back through the others you will find another breaker that turns the garage on. If this turns out to he the case, mark the two breakers for when you have someone come out to split the circuits into two, which should have been the original intent.

There are also a couple of other options, the breaker could be bad and not shutting off, the hot wire could be stuck under the main, it could be fed from one side of a two pole breaker that you didn't shut off thinking it was a 240 volt load.

 

[Innovate1]

In old houses you will find some crazy stuff. My sister had an old house with several fuse boxes. Never gave it much thought but when we knocked it down to put up new we found a big wad of wires in the wall behind the boxes with clamps and tape from the weatherhead breaking out to wires to each of 3 fuse boxes. Never had an issue with it but very non code even back in the day. As others have said some careful inspection of the boxes and wire tracing and you should find the feed. Covered boxes in the walls/ceilings are a possibility which makes it harder.

 

[unslow1]

I've had two garages with totally separate power feeds to the garage. Like mentioned above pull the main and see if the garage is actually powered from the house box.

 

[ycgoat]

I would pull the meter to make sure they did not tap at or before the meter

 

[Zeke]

I would pull the meter to make sure they did not tap at or before the meter

I would do that as a last resort. The OP mentioned that he has someone that can come out first of the year. Might be worth waiting for if the meter is involved. Not just anyone should be pulling meters w/o experience.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

I would pull the meter to make sure they did not tap at or before the meter

Doing that in some jurisdictions can mean hefty fines and/pr criminal charges

 

[BillK]

Can you see the wiring in the garage ? How many circuits are there ? If you can see the wiring can you tell if it goes towards you main panel ? How about a few pictures ? Any additional wires on the meter panel ?

 

[eejack]

Is the garage close to a neighbors house?

 

[sparky 1971]

Why not just start by shutting off every breaker, one at a time, leaving them off until the garage goes out? I've probably been on 10 service calls in my life where someone decided that a circuit couldn't be shut off. All but one of them turned out to be double fed from the same phase, requiring two breakers to be shut off in order to kill the power. The other was in a subpanel that had been forgotten about located behind a door that had never been closed. That will be the fastest and easiest thing to eliminate. I don't advocate ever shutting off a main breaker unless it's an emergency. I've seen too many get shut off and they wouldn't turn back on.

 

[PCustoms]

Hi,
We bought a new house this yr. 1959 built with attached garage.
200amp breaker box in basement. No other breaker box.
When i turn this box off, every fuse, i still have power in my garage!

Why not just start by shutting off every breaker, one at a time, leaving them off until the garage goes out?

I think he did that...

OP,post a pic of the panel you are shutting things off. My bet is this is a sub panel. Also check near your meter, you may find a small panel there.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

 

[ecotec]

Neighbors basement… right under the 2 pole breaker that says double oven…

 

[Shiftless]

I have heard of instances where customers wanted to hide their high useage by tapping in before the meter. (Grow houses).
One way to check would be to watch the meter before and after turning on a high current user in the garage. Like maybe a space heater. If the meter registers no increased kilowatts, then the power from the garage is not coming through that breaker box.

 

[ecotec]

A local electrical contractor had a tap buried in his back yard.

The art gallery on his property was hooked into the line side of the meter.

The same guy (Gary Tanaglia of Commerce Twp) got 14 months in prison and had to pay back million dollars for some scheme at the airport.

 

[sparky 1971]

I think he did that...

OP,post a pic of the panel you are shutting things off. My bet is this is a sub panel. Also check near your meter, you may find a small panel there.

He says he shut them all off, but I doubt he shut them off and left them off until the garage went out. If it's double fed, two breakers have to both be off for it to work. Standard procedure would be to turn them off one at a time, when the outlet doesn't go dark, turn it back on and move to the next. But, maybe he did have all of them off at the same time.

 

[Metal-Marc]

Is the garage close to a neighbors house?

This.

 

[duneslider]

I too am curious what his panel looks like. In my area the panels in the house I guess are technically sub-panels. The panel outside where the meter is has a 200amp breaker in the box (in my case) then the panel in the house just has all the branch circuit breakers. My dad's house the electrician put two breakers in the outside box and he has 2 panels in the house with all the branch circuits. I don't know why they did it that way but it has always stood out to me because I hadn't seen it done that way before. I know my outside panel is big enough to have a handful of breakers in it and I see electricians pull from them quite often in finished houses to feed AC and Hot tubs.

 

[Wrench97]

Buddy of mine had a garage with a sub panel in it, he insisted there was not one........................it was behind a shelving unit that came with the house.

 

[sparky 1971]

He hasn't been back since he started the thread Saturday night. He probably figured it out.