Hello,
I’ve been working on the electrical in my kitchen, moving my wall outlets to order cabinet outlets. I always turn off every breaker even remotely close to the area I’m working on. I finished tearing out the outlet, installed a new junction box to extend the wires and went to turn on the power to the outlet to verify the line in side for GFCI outlets when I discovered I couldn’t find one single breaker that would supply power to the outlet. I then discovered that a pair of breakers directly above/below each other both had to be on to supply power to one black hot line.
I started searching and started reading about multi wire branch circuits. I opened more outlets until I found an outlet box completely overstuffed that contained the MWBC. I basically removed the outlet fed in two new 12/2 with the old 12/3 line in, tied all 3 neutrals together, tied all 3 grounds together, tied the black to the new line black, and tied the red to the other new line black. I created a new outlet box, wired it up with pigtails, and that branch was complete. Oh, and I verified the voltage drop from black to red was 240V. When I flip the one branch breaker, the outlets power up and down as expected.
My other branch goes to the other side of the room to what I presume is the problem outlet. I can’t see where it could possibly stop elsewhere and all the other outlets I can attribute to other breakers. After rewiring the MWBC, the outlet behavior hasn’t changed.
I then discovered that the outlets in my island also exhibit the same behavior and appear to be downstream of the initial problem outlet. All the outlets in the kitchen test out as being wired properly.
I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas. My next step is really to call someone to open up my breaker panel and inspect the connections there. I know everything works, but I’m afraid of making a mistake elsewhere or creating a problem from a lack of understanding.
Thanks for any ideas!
