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TIL an outlet tester can lie to you for 3 hours
Spent an afternoon chasing a dead outlet in my workshop. Voltage pen said it was live, but nothing worked. Finally dug out my multimeter and found a loose neutral two feet back in the junction box. Has anyone else had a tool give them completely wrong info like that?
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phoenix_carter26d ago
My buddy Mark spent 4 hours last weekend rewiring a light fixture because his non-contact voltage tester kept beeping at the wire. Turned out the tester was picking up induced voltage from a neighboring circuit running through the same conduit. He finally figured it out when he touched the bare wire and got zapped, but not as bad as if it was actually live. Now he keeps a cheap solenoid tester in his bag just for backup.
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