turbodog
Flashaholic
Here goes...
While builing some shelves into the wall of my home office, I accidentally shot a nail from my nail gun into some wires in the wall. The nail was a 3.5" finish nail of either 16 or 18 gauge.
I fired off about 10 nails quickly, and am not sure which nail is the problem. Right after I fired the nails, I noticed the lights go "blip". I ignored it, and later found that the breaker for clothes dryer #2 had flipped.
The problem is that I would love to try and fix this w/o tearing into the wall. The wall in question is an exterior wall. It is layered like this: brick/insulation board/stud wall with blown-in insulation/sheetrock/paint/1" thick end support for my shelves.
To further complicate matters, this section of wall (between 2 studs) contains: the other dryer wire, the kitchen cooktop wire AND a 2" plastic conduit that contains the main feed from the outside panel to the inside panel. Oh yeah, the outside panel sits on the exact opposite of the wall from the area in question.
What I have done:
1. left the breaker off and ignored the problem for 8 months
2. got motivated and decided to fix this
I pulled the outside breaker out of the panel so I could test and try to find exactly what the nail shorted out.
Before I go further, I am assuming 1 or more of the following:
1. the nail shorted between both hot wires for dryer#2
2. shorted between either/both hots and the neutral wire
3. shorted from dryer#2 hot(s) and another hot/neutral wire from the cooktop
4. NOT assuming that the dryer#2 wire shorted to anything in the 2" conduit. This is because they are close (in the same stud space) but not close enough together.
I could find no voltage on dryer#2, indicating that the hot wires were not shorted with hot wires from another appliance. Also, if say dryer#2 hot1 shorted with dryer#1 hot2 (out of phase) then wouldn't have the breakers flipped for both circuits?
I could find no continuity on dryer#2's hot wires and ground, indicating that they were not shorted to a ground or a neutral wire.
I applied a small dc voltage to the wires and used my probe to check the nail heads for voltage. None was found.
I reinstalled everything and turned the breaker on; it did not trip again. I did not apply a load though. This leads me to think that the nail:
1. grazed some wires and then moved away from them
2. being a small nail, it was burned in half and opened the circuit (right as the breaker tripped). This does not seem likely since none of the nail heads showed voltage in my test and they did not show continuity with ground either.
Ideas? (other than tear the wall out?)
While builing some shelves into the wall of my home office, I accidentally shot a nail from my nail gun into some wires in the wall. The nail was a 3.5" finish nail of either 16 or 18 gauge.
I fired off about 10 nails quickly, and am not sure which nail is the problem. Right after I fired the nails, I noticed the lights go "blip". I ignored it, and later found that the breaker for clothes dryer #2 had flipped.
The problem is that I would love to try and fix this w/o tearing into the wall. The wall in question is an exterior wall. It is layered like this: brick/insulation board/stud wall with blown-in insulation/sheetrock/paint/1" thick end support for my shelves.
To further complicate matters, this section of wall (between 2 studs) contains: the other dryer wire, the kitchen cooktop wire AND a 2" plastic conduit that contains the main feed from the outside panel to the inside panel. Oh yeah, the outside panel sits on the exact opposite of the wall from the area in question.
What I have done:
1. left the breaker off and ignored the problem for 8 months
2. got motivated and decided to fix this
I pulled the outside breaker out of the panel so I could test and try to find exactly what the nail shorted out.
Before I go further, I am assuming 1 or more of the following:
1. the nail shorted between both hot wires for dryer#2
2. shorted between either/both hots and the neutral wire
3. shorted from dryer#2 hot(s) and another hot/neutral wire from the cooktop
4. NOT assuming that the dryer#2 wire shorted to anything in the 2" conduit. This is because they are close (in the same stud space) but not close enough together.
I could find no voltage on dryer#2, indicating that the hot wires were not shorted with hot wires from another appliance. Also, if say dryer#2 hot1 shorted with dryer#1 hot2 (out of phase) then wouldn't have the breakers flipped for both circuits?
I could find no continuity on dryer#2's hot wires and ground, indicating that they were not shorted to a ground or a neutral wire.
I applied a small dc voltage to the wires and used my probe to check the nail heads for voltage. None was found.
I reinstalled everything and turned the breaker on; it did not trip again. I did not apply a load though. This leads me to think that the nail:
1. grazed some wires and then moved away from them
2. being a small nail, it was burned in half and opened the circuit (right as the breaker tripped). This does not seem likely since none of the nail heads showed voltage in my test and they did not show continuity with ground either.
Ideas? (other than tear the wall out?)