When I first moved into our house there were cheap and nasty wall sconces installed . I removed them and blanked them off [wire nuts and electrcal tape] but left the switches.
Now the walls have been refinished and the locations of the scones totally obscured . Years later I want to install track lighting and use the sconce wireing as a feed, is there any way of locating the location of the original sconces with out tearing the wall apart.??? mjh
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Some of the newer stud finders will detect AC wiring. Zercom makes one for sure.
-- John, in Minnesota
Opps, that should be ZIRCON
-- John, in Minnesota
I had a similar situation recently and had great success with my lumbar wizard metal detector. I was able to acurately trace the romax through the wall board and map it out with ease..
EJ
Let's try a few low-tech solutions...
Presumably, you patched the walls after removing the sconces. Unless you're much better at that than most folks, your patches left some slight irregularities in the walls, which may be detectable under the right conditions.
Using a strong light at a low angle in an otherwise darkened room, you may be able to see where those irregularites are.
And if you have at least a general idea where to look, try closing your eyes and feeling for them -- your hands will detect things your eyes won't. (That's how, in my first house, I found a couple of boxes that had been plastered over when a previous owner removed wall sconces.)
If the boxes are steel, a strong magnet might find them.
Or you could sound for them, by rapping on the wall with your knuckles, the same way you would to locate a stud.
If all this fails, then get some of the detection equipment recommended by others in this thread.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.
There's a much better way. Plan some project, like putting an anchor in the wall to hang a painting, which requires that you penetrate open sheetrock with nothing behind it. Pick your spot and bang it in. You're guaranteed to find the old electrical box that way. Never fails.
If you really want to be sure, do it with the last anchor you've got, right when the stores close on Saturday night, and your wife's coming home from a trip tomorrow morning and expects the picture hung.
:) L1, L2, L3, L4 or L5?
There is a small device that will sense the presence of energized wires. I've heard it called a voltage detector. Mfgrs include Greenlee and AW Sperry. I've purchased them in the electrical dept of HD and Lowes. You would need to turn the switch on and scan the wall. Unfortunately it has limited range (1/2 to 1") so it might take a while to scan the wall.
Howard
It's a code violation to conceal any junction box where the wires are joined...so technically you won't be able to use these concealed boxes to feed anything because the wires are discontinued at the panel/fuse box.
Otherwise, if you want to sell the house at any point in the future, you just might want to get a case of altimerz and forget about those concealed boxes :-)
What junction box ??????
Did you take any pictures of the walls before removing the sconces? If so, look at them to get an idea of a good starting point. Bruce
So the wires were just run inside the wall with no box mounted where they exited the wall surface? That's a no-no as I understand it. There should be a junction box at any location where the wire run is begun or ended.
Likewise, as sam noted, you can't cover a box such that the box is inaccessible without tearing apart a finish surface. When one removes a fixture such as your sconces one should either put a standard blank cover over the box opening (not generally a very aesthetically pleasing solution) or pull the wiring completely back to the previous box (much more effort and complex if the removed fixture is in the middle of a run) or, similarly, trace the circuit backwards and disconnect the splice that feeds your sconce wiring. The point being that there should be no energized wire without access to its start and end points.
If there's no box in the wall where the sconces were mounted then you really should trace and maybe pull the wire back to a point where you can locate an accessible box to begin the track run. This is a simple thing to do from an attic or basement.
Been an L3 guy for years...
I'd guess 80% of woodworkers are also DIY handymen who do a little plumbing, wiring and everything else. A little input on what the code says is always a good thing for guys like us. Thanks.
bob g.
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