How To Trace Wires In A Wall | Multimeter Continuity Test

what's up you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i am installing a ceiling light in a bedroom that's never had a ceiling light in the middle of the room this is the type of construction where they used a light switch that controlled the top outlet on all the outlets around the room so that you can install a lamp and that's how they control uh the overall lighting of the room but i want to update everything and get a ceiling light so i'm putting all the outlets back to just be powered so the top portion is always powered not controllable it's light switch and to do that i really need to trace down the wires and make sure i know where all the different wires are going so i get the electrical circuit configured to this new use case to do that it's pretty easy what i use is a multimeter and this multimeter has the resistance setting that you're going to need where you'll see it has what looks like a small horseshoe that's actually indication of ohms which is the unit of measure for resistance in addition to the multimeter it's nice to have some extra wire you don't have to have a single strand of wire you could also use let's say romex if that's what you're using for your job and then also handy not necessary but it will help you out is these little lever wire nuts and those are nice because you can stick the wire in one side and close the lever and then stick the multimeter probe on the other side and close the lever and then you can reuse these so i always carry a few of these with me if i had to do a continuity check like we're going to do today if you don't know what these are and you haven't seen them just look down in the description you'll see the link to these type of lever nuts and then also the multimeter that i was using so let's jump in and i'll show you an application of using the continuity track to trace down your wires okay so for my use case you can see that i have three different yellow wires which were actually the hot side that went to the top of that outlet and that's what was switching the top side of the outlet but i want to know which one of these yellow wires goes over to that outlet so here's where the extra cable comes in handy because i have now at this outlet i have what i believe to be the yellow wire going over there into one of these lever nuts and then my black extension wire all coiled up here and then that end of the extension wire that's where that lever nut comes in handy right because you can just put the probe and the wire within there close those down and then they'll secure them together so you can use the negative or positive side black or red side it doesn't matter so we'll take the multimeter and the extension wire and then that's what really extends us over to this outlet so now we can get the extension we need to do a continuity check so let me set up the camera and i'll show you doing that check right here okay so now we'll take our multimeter and there are different styles and a little different configurations but as long as you have the resistance setting we'll switch it over to resistance you'll see the horseshoe looking thing or the ohms come up and then you do want to make sure that the audible alarm is on so here it's off there's on now you can do a check real quick and that is just by connecting these two together [Music] so you know your audible alarm is on and working all right so now to check these we have our extension wire going over to the other outlet and basically i want to see which of these three wires is connecting over to that outlet so all you have to do is just check all right that's our candidate and i use painters tape then you can sharpie and mark those but that's it this is how you start tracking down all your different wires all right so hopefully that helped you out on your project i have a little bit more work to do on mine here to get that light installed but let me know in the comments if you if you have any questions uh that i can help with also to get the multimeter and the lever nuts that i use just look down in the description you'll see the link there and before you take off don't forget to subscribe to our channel as we have videos like this coming out on a weekly basis to help you around the house and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 62,184

Rating: 4.9185839 out of 5

Keywords: tracing wires with no power, Using a Multimeter to trace, how to trace wiring in, how to trace wiring inside walls, klein tools multimeter, klein tools multimeter mm400

Id: YLA5u8BJrwg

Length: 4min 37sec (277 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020