- #1
JayF
- 4
- 0
Hello all. I am not an electrical expert here, just know enough to wire basic things at home (i.e. switches, outlets, etc)...so please be kind.
My situation is this. We recently bought a new house and have found a couple of mysteries. The biggest one is that there are several electrical cables coming up out of the ground that are not energized, appear to be properly run, but are not labeled or connected to a power source. I suspect these were run with the intention of hooking them up as an outside outlet (i.e. a remote lamppost or Christmas lights) in one case, and running power to an outbuilding (for an interior light) in another case. There are several of these "cable ends" (ground/hot/neutral bundle) at various locations. I have found some not-connected ends neatly bundled in my circuit breaker box, but again with no labels.
My question is this...is there a safe/reliable method to determine/match up which end correlates with the other end? The number of "ends" in the box doesn't equal the number of "ends" I have found in remote locations. So I don't want to simply install an outlet on the remote ends, and then connect the in-house ends to a circuit breaker, and then turn things on/off. Ideally I'd like to test one line at a time to identify both of the ends, and then repeat until I've figured them all out. Then I can decide whether to remove, properly hookup, or properly prepare to leave for future use.
Sorry if this is a bit confusing, please ask any questions that might help clarify what my situation is and I'll give as much detail as I can. But if you can give some advice on what options I might have to sort all this out I would appreciate it. Thanks!
My situation is this. We recently bought a new house and have found a couple of mysteries. The biggest one is that there are several electrical cables coming up out of the ground that are not energized, appear to be properly run, but are not labeled or connected to a power source. I suspect these were run with the intention of hooking them up as an outside outlet (i.e. a remote lamppost or Christmas lights) in one case, and running power to an outbuilding (for an interior light) in another case. There are several of these "cable ends" (ground/hot/neutral bundle) at various locations. I have found some not-connected ends neatly bundled in my circuit breaker box, but again with no labels.
My question is this...is there a safe/reliable method to determine/match up which end correlates with the other end? The number of "ends" in the box doesn't equal the number of "ends" I have found in remote locations. So I don't want to simply install an outlet on the remote ends, and then connect the in-house ends to a circuit breaker, and then turn things on/off. Ideally I'd like to test one line at a time to identify both of the ends, and then repeat until I've figured them all out. Then I can decide whether to remove, properly hookup, or properly prepare to leave for future use.
Sorry if this is a bit confusing, please ask any questions that might help clarify what my situation is and I'll give as much detail as I can. But if you can give some advice on what options I might have to sort all this out I would appreciate it. Thanks!