Mregor Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 My POS Samsung took a shit for the second time in 2 years so I'm looking to replace it with a really big screen projector. Home is prewired so I go to the spot where the projector would go and pull the block-off plate to find a tube for the signal wires. Cool. The box right next to it has romex but it's not terminated and it's not hot either. Looked at electrical plans and nothing is even shown there. Pulled closest duplex outlets to see if it's just stuck in the closest box and nothing. Start looking around the house and found 3 more behind block-off plates; 2 more on other side of entertainment center and 1 in master bath where you would out a tv on wall by tub (has coax next to it). All bare romex rolled up inside box and all dead. WTF? Not sure why they would not just out the $1 duplex outlet in except it may look weird to have them where they are at. How can I trace without tearing open the wall? Lots of other messes with all the speaker ant Cat5 everywhere, but I can at least figure those out. This had me scratching and @#&*%#$! all day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chevyguy1969 Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 If the circuits are not energized they are most likely pulled all the way back to the breaker box. you can buy a tracer that will generate a signal on the wire so that you can confirm which wire it is. Caution do install this type of tracer on a live circuit. You also mentioned plans if you have blue prints look for a comunications page it may also show electric circuits for your enertainment systems however that would be along shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Desertdawg Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 They better not be hot .... Go to your breaker panel and see if you have breakers off...if not then the duplex is probably coiled behind the panel... BUT... Be careful you don't energize the wrong wires, or energize the circuit you want with bare wires just hanging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCMSH Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 If you are comfortable and confident in your ability, you need to pull the dead front off your electrical panel ******caution - live bussing/shit to make you dead behind there******* When in doubt, get a competent electrician 2 scenarios as I see it 1) as Dwayne mentioned - wire is pulled back inside the panel and either turned up or wire-nutted off. Likely they wouldn't install spare breakers and leave them turned off but you never know. 2) there is a common box or "gutter" to which all your pre-wire romex is pulled. You probably have pre wire from the panel to the gutter, and then vice-versa, from the boxes throughout the house to the gutter. This gives you the option to connect which ever and not necessarily all of them. Check those plans, hopefully they would note this but believe me, "as-built' plans are sometimes never that. If you have any accessible attic space look there, it'll look like a big spider with all the wires coming out of it if it isn't totally buried by insulation. Sometimes they'll hide it even inside the living space, say inside a closet or something to that effect. By code it has to be accessible Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1jester Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 if you have 2 Ends to a piece of romex that is not connected, you can wire a 9 volt battery to one end and use a voltmeter on the other end to test for continuity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChadC Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mregor Posted March 4, 2015 Author Share Posted March 4, 2015 The rest of the story...Single story, flat roof, zero attic access. I pulled the panel cover. No extra romex rolled up but I found one pair of larger gauge insulated wire not connected from the house "pipe". For the life of me I cant find a junction box. I've got 2 structured wire boxes in 3rd bedroom closet. One has 32 cat5e cables and a couple telephone cables, and the other has a fat bundle of coax. I have direct TV and only needed 2 although installer spent quite some time trying to find right coax cables. I can trace the cat5 with ohm meter and shorting all ends together. The whole home audio is in the entertainment center and there are 2 large bundles of 2-conductor speaker wires there along with empty raceways, one to projector area for signal and one to adjacent wall that could only be for security camera. They ran ceiling boxes and wired them to empty boxes for volume control near room light switches. Simple enough. I need to find this gutter you speak of. Will check the mechanical room better. Might be hiding on side of water heater but I painted entire house (well paid someone) but did all prep work myself so I think I would have found a junction box. I lined closets with cedar so really don't know where this could be. I sure didn't cover them up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCMSH Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Does the house have any lowered ceilings, say in the kitchen where there is a recessed light panel? Sometimes they hide it inside that type assembly. Was there an empty conduit in the electrical panel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mregor Posted March 4, 2015 Author Share Posted March 4, 2015 Does the house have any lowered ceilings, say in the kitchen where there is a recessed light panel? Sometimes they hide it inside that type assembly. Was there an empty conduit in the electrical panel? No lowered ceilings. I don't recall an empty pipe. There was the main pipe on left and the add on from when I had pool built. But I did find the 2 un-terminated wires, not romex, but single insulated wires, tan, and larger gauge than the small romex conductors. Maybe this goes to the j-box where the other romex are? Would be logical they might need larger gauge depending on how many are used so they go max. Oops, just remembered, there was 2 on roof that were also left bare and found on inspection but they were labeled in panel as Christmas lights. Figured they were just not caught by lazy inspector since they were on roof. They did not have block off plates. Could hardly notice as boxes were 3/4 filled with stucco. I'll get a pic of the panel tomorrow. Too late now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mregor Posted March 6, 2015 Author Share Posted March 6, 2015 Found them! The unfinished Romex goes to nearby outlets. They go in the top of the box, make a u turn and go back out the top. Had to pull them out of box to be able to see them. Just need to pigtail and connect. Easy, peasy. Drove me crazy for 2 full days. Now I just have to go through the several inches of bundles to label and finish off the ends, Going to run wired Ethernet vs wireless crap I have now. I have 32 cat5 lines I need to trace... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P51tj Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Sounds like you enjoy spaghetti! Nice work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCMSH Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Found them! The unfinished Romex goes to nearby outlets. They go in the top of the box, make a u turn and go back out the top. Had to pull them out of box to be able to see them. Just need to pigtail and connect. Easy, peasy. Drove me crazy for 2 full days. Now I just have to go through the several inches of bundles to label and finish off the ends, Going to run wired Ethernet vs wireless crap I have now. I have 32 cat5 lines I need to trace... Cool you found it, sucks you can't actually add new circuits to the equation; sort of defeats the purpose. Had they routed that Romex to a gutter box and run an empty pipe from the panel at least you could've added additional circuits. At least you have location flexibility Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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