FarmerPete
Well-known member
So I have an electrical dillema. Power to my 3-seasons room completely died. I get nothing from every switch/plug in the room with my no-contact voltage detector. The feeder wire for the room comes out of my subpanel in my garage, goes into the basement, along the floor, and then ultimately under the 3-season room. Using my non-contact voltage reader, it's beeping along the entire cable in the basement. I haven't pulled any of the outlets to double check connections or use the voltage detector inside the box. I guess I pretty quickly assumed something cut the wire.
The 3-seasons room is elevated maybe a foot or so off the dirt. There is no access to the underside. Two years ago, when the deck was replaced, I had a company spray foam the bottom of the 3-seasons room with foam insulation. Now that the deck is installed, the only way to possibly access under this room is to some how get under the deck, (very tight) and then cut a hole in the wood that protects the bottom of the 3-seasons room to crawl through. The only other way would be to cut a hole in the floor. This would obviously be bad for the floor and the spray foam insulation. The floor is vinyl that was installed ~3 years ago. It's one giant piece for the entire room. (11x20').
So my guess is that something got under there and nibbled on a cable. We've had chipmunks and cats get under there before. When they replaced the deck, the covered up the main entrance under there, but you'll never keep chipmunks/mice/etc out.
So how do you fix this? I am guessing that I could grab the feeder and junction it off. I could probably get it to one of the outlets easily enough. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my guess is that if I can restore power to a single outlet, it would probably bring the entire circuit alive. The problem is, somewhere under my room, there is a potentially broken wire. I can't imagine that leaving that there is a wise idea, especially if by circumventing it, I now get the other side of the wire hot. I really don't want to cause a fire.
I've done a lot of electrical, all of which passed inspection, but the vast majority of that was done when I had my garage down to the studs. I've never had to deal with doing stuff behind walls/under floors so much. I really hate to hire an electrician, especially if they are just going to end up wanting to destroy my floor. If my floor has to be destroyed, I would much rather do it myself. At least then I can spend the money I saved on fixing it.
Thoughts?
The 3-seasons room is elevated maybe a foot or so off the dirt. There is no access to the underside. Two years ago, when the deck was replaced, I had a company spray foam the bottom of the 3-seasons room with foam insulation. Now that the deck is installed, the only way to possibly access under this room is to some how get under the deck, (very tight) and then cut a hole in the wood that protects the bottom of the 3-seasons room to crawl through. The only other way would be to cut a hole in the floor. This would obviously be bad for the floor and the spray foam insulation. The floor is vinyl that was installed ~3 years ago. It's one giant piece for the entire room. (11x20').
So my guess is that something got under there and nibbled on a cable. We've had chipmunks and cats get under there before. When they replaced the deck, the covered up the main entrance under there, but you'll never keep chipmunks/mice/etc out.
So how do you fix this? I am guessing that I could grab the feeder and junction it off. I could probably get it to one of the outlets easily enough. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my guess is that if I can restore power to a single outlet, it would probably bring the entire circuit alive. The problem is, somewhere under my room, there is a potentially broken wire. I can't imagine that leaving that there is a wise idea, especially if by circumventing it, I now get the other side of the wire hot. I really don't want to cause a fire.
I've done a lot of electrical, all of which passed inspection, but the vast majority of that was done when I had my garage down to the studs. I've never had to deal with doing stuff behind walls/under floors so much. I really hate to hire an electrician, especially if they are just going to end up wanting to destroy my floor. If my floor has to be destroyed, I would much rather do it myself. At least then I can spend the money I saved on fixing it.
Thoughts?
