had a friend of a client ask me to look at a problem in their home , they have several lights in the rec room that do not work . Circuit feeding at 120v however down the line after ceiling box only have 108v . I seperated all wiring in boxes & FOUND one with 120 from hot side to ground but nothing from hot to neutral. House is 4 years old and some of the rec room wiring was done by home owner who swears he hid no boxes in ceiling behind drywall. They had some mice problems recently and got a cat. The problem came recently after 3 years of use. I talked to a fellow gc about it and he says he once was told by a sparky that you have to put insulation between any wire where it touches a duct or trunk otherwise it wears through in a few years. any body got any ideas as to cause. HO does not want ceiling oppened up.
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Cats and mice are not the problem. If you have an open neutral somewhere, you have to find it and fix it. I have sometimes found homeowner wiring where a staple was driven in too hard and punctured insulation. Or the studs shrank a little and pulled on something. Very rare. You may locate the problem generally without cutting drywall, but I doubt you'll fix it that way. However, I suspect you start digging and you'll find that buried box he believes does not exist.