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TIL you can find a short in a wall without opening it up, a guy in Fresno showed me with a $40 circuit breaker finder
I used to cut open drywall to chase dead circuits on old houses, which meant patching and painting after every service call. Last month a guy in Fresno walked me through using a circuit breaker finder and a tone probe to trace the run from the panel first, and I found the bad splice behind a bedroom outlet in 20 minutes. No patching, no repaint, and the homeowner was happy. I've done maybe 12 calls this way now and I'm not going back to the hammer. Anyone else use a tone probe on live circuits or do you kill the panel first every time?
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burns.thomas7h ago
The "no patching, no repaint" part is the real win here, because drywall work is what eats the whole afternoon on those calls. I read a thread on a sparky forum where a few guys said the tone probe gets flaky once the wire is buried behind insulation or foil backed board, so they use it to narrow down the room and then open a small hole. Killing the panel first is safer, but you lose the tone, so most of them just work it hot and keep one hand in their pocket.
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