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Small win today: used a 9 volt battery to find a bad zone instead of pulling the panel apart
So I had this customer out in Mesa with a zone that kept showing fault every time the AC kicked on, and I had already wasted an hour going wire by wire at the panel. Then I remembered something an old tech showed me a while back. I pulled the zone wires off the terminals and touched them across a plain 9 volt battery for a split second, just to see if the loop would hold. It held fine. That meant the wire run itself was good and the problem was the contact out at the slider, which had corroded so bad it couldn't handle any voltage sag. Swapped the contact for a new one and the zone has been clean for two weeks straight now. I know it sounds dumb and simple, but I was about to start cutting drywall. Curious if anybody else uses a battery to test loops like this or if I am the only one still doing it the old way.
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knight.diana1mo ago
Been doing that trick for years, nine volt on the loop saves so much time.
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