Couple years ago I found this:
I had always assumed it was dead; recently I borrowed a contactless voltage indicator, and sure enough, it can be made live (switched outlet for roof heat tape that got removed long ago). Found it behind what I thought was a heatshield above a wood stove; but I'm guessing that was put up to hide the wire. Best guess, PO was doing wiring over a hot stove. Anyhow, that's a line I want to tap for another outlet, so it's getting fixed. But in doing so, I found something I don't understand.
Question: this circuit (before the switch) runs from the breaker box with 12/3. Both black and red have 20A breakers. Is that legit? It seems wrong to me, since the neutral wire would be undersized. At the end of the line, the red is capped off and goes nowhere. Black goes to the switch, and then runs this (damaged) wiring. I'm tempted to remove the red wire at the breaker box and cap off, and leave a note on the wiring as to what is going on.
For more badness that I have to fix: it's a 20A breaker, feeding a 12g wire, to a 15A switch, with 12g wires running to 15A GFCI's. [Well, the one I can get to is a 15A GFCI, the other outlet is too high up at the moment.] [Well, it's two 20A breakers, but if I cap off the red, the other breaker will be unused.] So now I get to learn how to replace a breaker too. Oh goody.
I had always assumed it was dead; recently I borrowed a contactless voltage indicator, and sure enough, it can be made live (switched outlet for roof heat tape that got removed long ago). Found it behind what I thought was a heatshield above a wood stove; but I'm guessing that was put up to hide the wire. Best guess, PO was doing wiring over a hot stove. Anyhow, that's a line I want to tap for another outlet, so it's getting fixed. But in doing so, I found something I don't understand.
Question: this circuit (before the switch) runs from the breaker box with 12/3. Both black and red have 20A breakers. Is that legit? It seems wrong to me, since the neutral wire would be undersized. At the end of the line, the red is capped off and goes nowhere. Black goes to the switch, and then runs this (damaged) wiring. I'm tempted to remove the red wire at the breaker box and cap off, and leave a note on the wiring as to what is going on.
For more badness that I have to fix: it's a 20A breaker, feeding a 12g wire, to a 15A switch, with 12g wires running to 15A GFCI's. [Well, the one I can get to is a 15A GFCI, the other outlet is too high up at the moment.] [Well, it's two 20A breakers, but if I cap off the red, the other breaker will be unused.] So now I get to learn how to replace a breaker too. Oh goody.