I have a 1948 house that has mid-century conduit throughout. All old two-prong outlets in the old house; only the 1980s extension has your typical 14/2-G.
Anyway, in the old house (as the title says) my finder is locating two circuit breakers associated with a single outlet.
I haven’t looked closely at this yet but strongly suspect that the last homeowner replaced a two-circuit outlet (where one was controlled by a nearby switch) with a single circuit outlet. There is an extra switch in my living room – doesn’t appear to do anything – so this seems about right. If its load is also on the outlet then its return will be affected too.
So could the outlet be going back to the panel across two different circuits? Not sure there’s a way to test this without taking out the outlet and testing everything in there w/ a multimeter in tandem w/ the light and breakers.
Any thoughts? Could it be something else?
Best Answer
The Klein circuit breaker finder is just a re-branded High-Tech, the Harbor Freight brand for about triple the price.
https://toolguyd.com/klein-breaker-finder-and-hi-tech-circuit-detective-identical/
So don't expect much. But even with a good one, a breaker finder should never be treated as more than a guess to narrow down further testing and verification.
If the breaker finder indicates two circuits, it's possible the wiring is crossed up somewhere and both breakers energize this receptacle. That's not uncommon if someone makes a mistake connecting blacks to blacks somewhere. However it's even more common for the breaker finder to make a mistake.
If you turn off the breaker and test the receptacle for voltage, and find no voltage present, then you have demonstrated that that breaker and only that breaker provides power to that receptacle. However: In a case like this where you're concerned something's wrong, I'd not trust a non-contact voltage tester or a plug in receptacle tester to verify there's no voltage present; I'd want to test with a good voltage tester or meter.