electrical help needed - how to find short circuit?

[Mike Gager]

well i had some time tonight to mess with it and i got it figured out.

actually used the continuity tester to trace it. was messing around with it and realized it was beeping when i put the leads on the ground and hot wires coming out of the same branch. this got me thinking that the two were touching somewhere along the circuit so i just narrowed it down til i found the culprit

it was a 3 way switch that the ground wire coming of the ground screw had been bent over and was touching the red wires screw. the switch is located on the ceiling right next to the garage door track, im guess the vibration from the garage door coming down shook the wire enough to touch the screw and cause the short

thanks everybody for all the advice!

[AL Ursich]

A local Bar had a Pizza Kitchen and the guy asked me to look at it. His cat walking on the appliances would sometimes jump walking between the frig and the sink. Went in and hooked my meter to the water facet and the refrigerator and the shell was 115 VAC HOT.... Every appliance was HOT.... Went into the attic and found a junction box with the spiral metal power cable and the branch to the appliances. Inside the metal spiral are 2 wires black and white. They were so old they were both black looking.

Well the Electrician for BEER guy picked the wrong wire. He tied the Black supply wire to the White new wire and White to black. Then he tied the ground to the black wire... Ouch..... Ground was HOT !!!

I used one of the neon screwdrivers to measure which one was the real HOT wire... Fixed the problem.

AL