I just bought an old house that I'm currently fixing up. Right now, the house doesn't have any power or water because I don't want to pay for power and water before I move in. I have a few chipped receptacles, but instead of replacing those few by themselves, I'm instead going to buy and install gfci outlets at the start of each circuit and move those old receptacles to where the chipped ones are. Of course though, I don't know which outlets are on which circuits, or even how many different circuits my house has for outlets.
How can I figure out which outlets are in the same circuit, preferably on the cheap? Is it even possible to do? I was thinking that if I had some sort of cheap ac power generator, I could attach it to the load wires and take note of which outlets start receiving power, but that sounds too expensive.
Actually, if the wires aren't connected to anything, could I technically just attach a 9-volt dc battery to the load wires? Would it basically just be like a square wave with really slow hz? How stupid is this idea?
Best Answer
I'd use one of these - a tone tracer. They're mainly used by telecoms engineers to trace pairs in large multipair cables and junction boxes but they'll do just as well for this application.
Though why you don't want to pay for electricity before you move in beats me. Surely you can get a plan where you just pay for what you actually use?
I'd have to advise against doing electrical work on the cheap though, it rarely ends well.