Homeowner Forum / Rural Living / July 2008

Not sure what sort of trouble you are shooting but for a simple easy to
understand explanation of house wiring, you might check at your local
Home Depot or Lowes. They carry booklets that explain how to wire
various fixtures and circuits along with load capacities of different
wire sizes.  Its not exactly a troubleshooting guide but depending on
your novice level it will help you understand how things *should* be wired.

If your trouble goes any deeper than that, I would strongly recommend
calling in a licensed electrician.

Do you need multi-colored marks on dead trees?  If not then there are a raft
of such resources on the net.  Here's the first hit when I googled for "home
electrical troubleshooting"

http://www.thecircuitdetective.com/

Looks pretty good.

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources -Albert Einstein

In article
<dd2a5bce-42e4-4548-9699-5c4a4961a72a@h1g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,

"How to wire your house." It's paperback and comes with a hole in the
corner that will fit over a 16d nailhead, so you can hang it off a nail
while you're on a ladder.

Troubleshooting electrical wiring is advanced and pretty much requires
understanding quite a bit... (Whereas installing a new circuit can be quite
easy and would take much less knowledge.)

Like knowing what electricity is. In other words you need to understand how
it works and how things *should* work before you can identify and test for
something which is not working properly. i.e. Basic knowledge of AC
electricity, DC electricity, amps, volts, etc.

Then knowing basic home construction and how wiring is typically run in
homes. i.e. What is that wire? Where does it go? What size is a wire? What
size should the wire be? What size should the breaker be for a certain wire
size?

Then knowing electrical codes (National Electrical Code). Is the wiring in
the house done properly to code? Or is it done wrong and needs to be
corrected? Is it dangerous or safe?

Sometimes homeowners install wiring which is dangerous. So being able to
identify this and correct it. Instantly looking at it and knowing it is not
right.

Then historical wiring for older homes. Wiring changes along with the times.

And knowledge of how test instruments work and how some can give "false"
readings or readings which should be ignored. Like digital voltmeters as
opposed to analog voltmeters. What those outlet testers are really testing.
Continuity testers and how to use them without damaging them. Etc.

<fpena445@yahoo.com> wrote in message