This weekend I took down my range hood and accidentally crossed the hot and neutral wires and Zap! I shorted the line. The breaker didn’t flip but I noticed that nothing work on that circuit. Using a greenlee circuit detector I traced the short back to a junction box. I have a pic attached (sorry for the bad resolution I was using my camera phone.
I have an older home and the box is joining 3 lines. I’m calling a licensed electrician to fix this. I’m curious to know what he may do. Based on your experiences how would you fix this. Can a short destroy the romex?
The romex in question is the older type using the hard crumbly sheathing. You’ll notice the brown goo on the white wires. I don’t think its a scorch mark but residue from electrical tape. All the wires in this box are joined via tape.
Thanks for your responses.
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You're not making sense. What tells you it's a "short" and how did you trace it? (It's far easier to trace an open connection than a short.)
I'm guessing it's a short. I traced the lines back to the junction box by using the voltage detector seeing if the lines were hot. All the lines were dead until I checked this junction box. There is a ceiling fan and a couple of wall plugs which runs on this line and I noticed the fan and plugs died after I crossed the hot and neutral wires.
It's most likely an open connection in that box, but since you don't know what you're doing, leave it to the sparky.
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Yea I double checked the breakers and nothing was tripped. I even reset all of them and still had the same problem. I'll see what the electrician has to say.
Since this is in a kitchen, check to see if any GFCI receptacles in the room have popped. I can't tell anything from the picture but it's possible the range hood is wired through one somewhere.
"The breaker didn't flip "
Are you sure?
Many breakers the handles don't move much.
But if it is trip then as you move to the off side then it will not have much resistance. Move it all the way to Off and then back to On.
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If the wires in the box are connected with tape, and they dont have wire nuts on them, then it is quite likely that the excessive current thru the line when you shorted them caused the connection to fry.
I'd turn off the breaker, double check, then remove the tape and inspect the connections.
If bad, cut and restrip the wires, and re-connect with wire nuts, close up J box and move on.
Possibilities -
A. The junction box pictured may be from a different circuit.
B. As someone else mentioned, there is a junction box between the hood and the box you found. You need to find it. It may have tripped a GFCI or fried the wiring.
C. You may have fried the hood circuitry.
Install wirenuts to all connections with just tape.
Frankie
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If there is a GFCI in there it may have been blown open, never to get better. They usually do not deal with bolted faults well.
I suspect that there's more than one thing goining on, and a visit from a proper electrician might be called for.
I say this because I don't like a few of the things I see. I don't like the junction box used - it ought to be larger - and I don't like the way the ground wire is looped around the cover screw. Also curious is the use of fabric-covered Romex, with a ground wire ... and there ought to be more than just the one ground wire there!
I suspect that I'm looking at someon'e addition to the original wiring, with a few corners cut in the process. If the wire insulation itself is crumbling, you really need to find out why.
Nor is the use of the voltage 'tick' much good for troubleshooting; it's time to break out the meter.
The electrician stopped by and turns out it was the breaker. The short had popped the breaker off the panel before the breaker flipped. The breakers on my box were already somewhat loose but I never paid attention to it. The pop was enough to knock the breaker off its connection.Thanks for your feedback.
and you're addressing the connections in the box you suspected at first right? TFB (Bill)
Yea we looked at junction box and he didn't see a need to replace anything.