Dead circuits in house

[MB]

I have 4 dead circuits in my House all on 1 wall 2 on top floor 2 on bottom floor

I have rewired and put new outlets and tested continuity on all the 4 outlets. I noticed the line feeding the 4 outlets( the wires going to the first of the 4 boutlets) is dead. All circuit breakers are on. My questions is since these wires are in the walls , is there any way to trace this wire back to the breaker panel and see if its brokenn somewhere or at least any way to find the path of the wire? Thanks

[RBM]

It's likely there are more than just the four outlets on the circuit. If indeed all the circuits are "live" at the panel, which needs to be tested by removing the cover, it's likely that there is an open circuit at a still live outlet preceding the dead ones, on the same circuit. Open and check all live outlets in the vicinity of the dead ones, looking for loose connections, especially in back stabbed connections

[HeyBub]

The chances of a broken connection inside a wall are vanishingly small.

You might be able to use one of those signal injection gizmos and run the detector over the wall to trace the wiring back to the next receptacle in the chain - which is where the disconnect will be.

[Joe]

Any GFCI's upstream of this string? Or el cheapo backstabber outlets?

Joe

[MB]

Thanks,

Yes the outlets were backstabbed, thats why I rewired correctly. There is a GFI for the bathroom near this first outlet in the series. The GFI outlet works fine. I will check, possibly it is feeding off of there. If that doesnt work I guess I need to trace the wire path?

[Joe]

When you rewired your outlets, did you pigtail or use the outlet for pass through? The generally preferred professional practice these days is to pigtail. Reasons for this have been discussed thoroughly in recent posts to this NG. Re: GFI...check the device for continuity from inputs to pass through terminals. You could have a failure there but it is rare. HTH

Joe