Having trouble tracing a wire - Can i use a toner?

[RichTJ99]

Hi,

I am trying to find a wire to an outside light near the garage - near the pool. There is a red & blue (white & ground too) wire. Red will power lights, Blue powers a blower. At one point the last owner had an old remote control to control these two devices & they still run through the pool computer (or whatever it is).

In the fuse box, there is no Red, Blue, White wire that comes in, so somewhere, they must have put a splice & changed colors of the wire. There just isnt anything that matches.

Somewhere, the wire changes colors, then runs through that computer thing (from the 1980's), which has a number of relays. I cannot find any physical wire that matches up.

I am now looking to bypass the computer & just have a 'regular' wire.

Can I use some type of Toner to find the wire? I just want to find it inside the building / panel so I can bypass.

I know a network toner would work for a network cable but due to all the electical, would it work? I would be happy to shut the main power to the building off to try it. Would it just jump signal due to the 14/12 gauge wiring?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[pattenp]

You can cut the main power and shut off all the breakers and use a 12V battery to back feed the circuit and use a meter at the panel to check at each breaker to find the wire.

 

[G_P]

Turn the light on and start flipping off breakers until the light goes out?

Once you find the breaker that sends power to it (probably sends power to the whole 80's computer controller) you can then open up the relay box on the computer thing and see which relay is energized and turning the light on.

Alternately you can open up the relay box and use a plastic stick (or anything non conductive) to manually push each relay closed one at a time until you find the one that makes the light come on. Then you will know which wire it is.

Shutting off the main and backfeeding from the light with a 12v battery wont work as the relay will be open preventing power from making its way back to the breaker panel. If you can determine which relay controls the light you can backfeed from the relay to the panel with the main breaker off to determine which breaker feeds the relay box.

 

[RichTJ99]

Before things stopped working when a little rewiring was done (key here), everything did work as of 2 days ago.

I went to the switch that controlled the lights, pulled it off, traced it back to the panel (lucky its about 6 inches away), found that wire, and again luckily I can see where it goes outside & then heads underground.

The switches I am using are Insteon home automation switches, the only reason I mention it is that it has a light on it to indicate if the power is on or off to the device. So in terms of wiring, the switch was not touched, and never lost power. It just lost the 'ability' to cause the lights to go on.

In the outside conduit where the lights & blower are powered, that conduit definitely has the white, red & blue wires in it, to me that says somewhere those same wires should come back out of the ground somewhere (right?).

The wire that controls the switch for the lights, I can see where it comes in, but there are no other lights in that area. I guess they could be in the wall?

It seems like I can get the power to the outside wire but it goes underground powered & then I am lost.

Somewhere that box comes into play but the wires for the controls seem to only go one way.

I am at a loss on next steps, but I will be stopping by home depot to get http://www.homedepot.com/p/Fluke-Ne...nd-Probe-Kit-26000-900/202290922#.UZjLXrV8ySo for toning, but maybe there is a secret underground box?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Milton Shaw]

Fluke meters that have the voltage present feature have a high and low scale that will find wires about 12-16 inches away behind sheetrock etc. Some of the stud detectors are very sensitive to electrical behind walls also. I would try something like that. Just a couple of ideas on ways to find wires. You sound like you are looking for a hidden junction box, that even could be underground.

 

[RichTJ99]

I am planning on shutting the power to the whole building so I can have a better shot. I hope that works.

It has to come into the building somewhere. The previous owner didnt seem to know about a hidden box & said that when he built it, he made sure that everything was supposed to be inside & not exposed to the elements.

 

[G_P]

Anyone could have made a splice in that wire somewhere and used different color wire to finish the run or to replace a damaged section.

 

[RichTJ99]

Right, all I care about is finding where it came into the building. I think its tied into that remote control thing in the relay itself. If I can bypass that, I am back in business.

I tied the blower power into the lights, & the lights work fine. Its just that one of the two power wires (one power for blower, one for lights) stopped working when we fixed the pump.

I dont think anything is broken, just a screw up in the wiring.