Electrical Troubleshooting

So you're looking for Electrical Troubleshooting tips? Although, there are many areas where practical tips would be useful, we'll start with:

Clearing a Short Circuit.

I'm always surprised to see how different electricians go about clearing a short circuit.

The most astonishing thing most of them do is to turn the breaker on to see if the circuit is still tripping.

Now, if you just got to the house, and you can't tell whether or mot the breaker is tripped and then you decide to try to turn the breaker on, well, that's once and you may be forgiven.

But to continuously attempt to turn the breaker on to see if you cleared the short, is plain inexcusable.

The first thing you need to do is place a pigtail socket (with a bulb) in series with the short.

In other words take the wire off the breaker that's tripping and wirenut it to one wire coming off the pigtails socket. Now, place the other wire from the socket onto the breaker. Now you can safely turn the breaker on, and will see that the bulb will go on.

When you eventually clear the short, the bulb will go off completely, you can remove the pigtail socket and reinstall the wire onto the breaker, and then turn the breaker back on.

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