Odd wiring circuit question.

11 years ago

In my 1965 house, which I am surprised has not burnt down a long time ago, we just found another odd wiring issue.

I am gut renovating two bathrooms and an adjoining bedroom at this time and when removing carpet and baseboard to prepare for framing a closet, we found wiring contemporary to the house (not later work) running on top of the floor below the baseboard and behind the tack strip for the carpet. It supplies an original outlet which is in a masonry wall, and it appeared to be pigtailed from another outlet on a different wall. (Like maybe they forgot to run wiring for a needed outlet during the original build).

Anyway, we were removing this wiring and there is no breaker that seems to supply this bedroom or the entire third floor of the house. There is now no power to one bedroom or the third floor of the house but there is no breaker tripped and shutting off the entire panel and each breaker individually seems to have no effect. There is no sub panel we can find and there is no breaker to a sub panel in any case.

The entire house is being rewired as we address each part of the house by a professional electrician but I wonder if anybody has any insight as to what's going on here?

I am to the point where I am wondering if this circuit is somehow connected to the house next door. There are four houses with common party walls in between that were all constructed together.

This may seem like a ridiculous suggestion but when I lived in a multi unit conversion before, there was an outlet in my Living Room that was not on Any circuit on my panel. It was on a circuit for building of for a different unit somehow.

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Comments (4)

klem1
11 years ago
"The entire house is being rewired as we address each part of the house by a professional electrician but I wonder if anybody has any insight as to what's going on here?"

It is impossible for other electricians to have more or better insite than the electrician you have on site. If you are wanting to compile a list of possibilities, the list is quite large , then what?
palimpsest
Original Author
11 years ago
Actually we decommissioned the outlet ourselves (general contractor) because it was pigtailed off another outlet. It didn't seem to make sense for me to make an appointment with the electrician I am using for the wiring to come 2or 3 weeks from now (he's that busy), to unhook one outlet. He is going to be coming in after the framing to run all new electrical for this bathroom and bedroom all the way from the panel (not trusting any existing here).

I was just curious as to what might be the case here, because although the contractor is capable of doing some minor electrical things like taking out an outlet and capping it off, he has never run across this sort of situation.
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klem1
11 years ago
You are doing the right thing by rewireing as you go room to room. I wouldn't waste an electrician's time figuring out circuits I wasn't intending to use anyhow.
kudzu9
11 years ago
I agree you are proceeding correctly. Your assumption about power from an adjacent unit could well be correct. If I were you, I'd be just curious enough to visit the neighbor with the common wall on that side and ask if you could turn off their main breaker for a minute to test your theory.