Part of electrical circuit dead



In my home, part of a circuit is dead. The lights do not work and the
outlets are dead. This is only a portion of the circuit. I checked the
obvious things myself:

1.) Make sure no circuit breakers tripped
2.) Make sure no GFCI breakers tripped
3.) Open up some of the outlets to look for a loose connection

I could not find anything myself so I hired an electrician. He came
out and did much the same thing I did. Opened up a bunch of outlets
and could find no cause for the failure. So I paid for a couple of
hours of work and no fix.

The electrician indicated there is a tool that you can use to track a
wire through a wall to pinpoint where the break occurs. Unfortunately
he doesn't have one. I guess you would put some electrical generator
of a sort on a plug and then use some detector to track it along the
walls to see when the signal stops.

My question is this for any electricians out there. There doesn't
appear to be any obvious reason for the broken circuit. I need to find
an electrician with the right tool for this type of problem. What type
of tool should I require that they have? Is there an industry term for
the type of tool that is needed? I'm open to having them open up part
of a wall, if necessary, but I want high confidence that they really
know where the fault is (assuming it's a break in a wall).

Thanks.

.



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