Never underestimate stupid, or at least ignorance. wavy lines wavy lines
wavy lines wavy linesAnother story of the same house, after removing a breaker with a visible trace of a cable to it, I was ready to cut the cable. A surprise "hit" me as the cable was still hot. I followed the cable branches back still further, and found that it was fed by another breaker on the same phase, in the ON position. A loop circuit. Needless to say I check & double check never trusting what should or shouldn't be, as it CAN be.
So, never say never, sometimes ignorance or sheer stupidity can be laughable or deadly.
I found something similar renovating this house.
While finishing up the electricity and getting ready to plaster, I was pulling out old deactivated cables and WHITE FLASH BANG found an active that should not have been.
So out comes my trusty UNI-T, all the mains are cut at the source, a long wire is pulled between the offender and the electrical box.
And it's beeping in way too many places, in the old stuff and my new box.
Eventually, I trace it down to a series of connection boxes that are meant to feed the push button activated lights in the entrance, stairs and landing.
And to the plugs in said places.
And to the lights and plugs of the four bedrooms.
And to the lights and plugs of the bathroom.
And to the lights of the kitchen.
AND TO THE BLOODY OUTSIDE GARAGE.
ON ONE 0.8mm² wire. And that's only the phase, I have yet to discover were the neutral is hidden...
There was probably more stuff connected to it that we already had cut out.
The house was wired up like this 30 years ago by a pro (there were still his stickers and his details on the house documents) and no inspector ever noticed...
(The same inspectors that failed an inspection on the previous house for having about 1cm of nearly visible (but fully isolated, safe etc) wiring on the top/behind of the fuse box.)
So, I spent the next 8 hours making this thing "safeish" and disconnecting as much of as possible.
Some "experts" here might say "you should have done X and Y". Yeah we did, dying in a shower of sparks is not my plan, but we tested one of the two wires and it lead to a set of fuses, we disconnected them both and marked the wires as "out". But one of the two cables bi-passed the fuse in a rather sneaky way and ended up connected to the rest of the stuff.
It's a pain in the arse, but it vindicates my approach the fitting all now wiring and fuses, fuses boxes etc in the house. TRUST NO ONE.
On a side note, the internet connection over the electrical wiring has improved dramatically (in the process to of being replaced by a router and CAT6 cabling).
To get back on subject, if you are "just doing continuity testing" on a "professionally installed electrical wiring" and the fuses are all "off" for that area, you might still have a surprise that can blow a 5$ DMM to kingdom come.