Dangerous situation?

[Crusader]

I had an electrician come to my house because several outlets and light switches were not working in a few rooms in my house. He was at the house for four hours. He checked the breaker boxes and found no problems. He checked 20 or 30 outlets and switches and found no problems. He was only able to identify the hot and cold outlets, which I already knew. He provided a solution but did not fix the problem. He rewired the one outlet and everything is back in working order. However, he was miffed that he was unable to find the "hot wire" he called it that remains exposed somewhere in the house. I asked if he was concerned and he kind of shrugged. I just want to know if this is a dangerous situation and whether another electrician might be able to provide answers.
Thanks

 

[Jadnashua]

It depends on what was actually done. Abandoning a dead, disconnected wire in the wall is okay...leaving a hot wire, unterminated is not. It should not have been all that hard to find the run where the break was, and disconnect it at both ends...that is probably what happened rather than him finding the actual break and repairing it, he ran a new cable.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

Let's say you want to sleep better. Consider putting an AFCI breaker for that circuit. That way if there is arcing due to some half-fast hot wire, the breaker should open.

 

[ActionDave]

It's not ideal. Without some more detailed info no one here could say what the danger level is.

Little known National Electric Code oddity......Live wire ends are not required to be in a junction box, only splices are.

 

[hj]

It appears that he is feeding both ends of a 'broken" wire. Whether there is a problem with it or not depends on WHERE the break is and why it happened.

 

[Crusader]

It depends on what was actually done. Abandoning a dead, disconnected wire in the wall is okay...leaving a hot wire, unterminated is not. It should not have been all that hard to find the run where the break was, and disconnect it at both ends...that is probably what happened rather than him finding the actual break and repairing it, he ran a new cable.

Ok thanks

Let's say you want to sleep better. Consider putting an AFCI breaker for that circuit. That way if there is arcing due to some half-fast hot wire, the breaker should open.

It appears that he is feeding both ends of a 'broken" wire. Whether there is a problem with it or not depends on WHERE the break is and why it happened.

Thanks everyone. I called another electrician. He told me he has to undo what the other guy did, and he's confident it'll be an easy fix. He basically told me the other guy didn't know what he was doing. He's coming next week.

 

[hj]

Did he actually CHECK IT OUT? If he just said the other guy did bad work without looking at anything, he may be no better than the other guy.