Spent $400 on a thermal imaging camera and it just found a hot neutral in a panel I was about to sign off on.

What's your go-to tool that's paid for itself by catching a problem you would've missed?

3 comments

3 Comments

My buddy's cheap voltage tester beeped at a light switch last month. He almost didn't check it, thought it was a fluke. Turned out the whole box was back-fed from another circuit, someone had tied neutrals together in a crazy way. That little ten dollar tool saved him from a callback and a real headache.

henry_anderson5425d ago

Ever think like matthew897 that it's just messy? I did until a back-fed box nearly fried a fixture I was working on.

matthew89725d ago

But is a back-fed box actually dangerous or just messy wiring? It sounds more like a code violation than something that would cause immediate harm. Those testers beep for a lot of things, not all of them are critical. I've seen similar stuff that just meant the light wouldn't turn off right, not that it was a fire waiting to happen. Sometimes a headache is just fixing bad work, not preventing disaster.