Today I've seen an installation which powered different recording professional sound equipment. The board had 10 circuits with 10 MCBs. Just as an enquire, when I measured with my multimeter the continuity between live and neutral on some circuits it gave me infinite as it should be, but on 3 circuits it gave me a reading of only 6 ohms or 10 ohms. Basically all the load equipments were connected to the circuits and of course the mains and MCB's were off. Can some equipments could potentially give a false multimeter reading, even they work fine ? When powered on, all the equipments were working fine...
Enquire about continuity testing
- Thread starter k1gabi
- Start date
Help Support Talk Electrician Forum:
anything connected to a circuit will give false readings
switching off is usually nough to resolve any issues, but unplugging is far better.
switching off is usually nough to resolve any issues, but unplugging is far better.
Last edited by a moderator:
So, if the equipments were working fine, this could be a false reading ? What type of loads can give a false continuity reading like this one, bellow 10 ohms ? Ty.
the idea of the testing is to test the cabling / circuits, not any equipment connected to it. Sounds like you are testing wrong having re-read your post. Continuity is usally done Live and earth, connect live and earth at the board end, (put ends in a connector block) then take a reading at the end of the cct. I like to do N-E as well. readings of 6-10 Ohms is a fail for most ccts.
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2008
- Messages
- 14,293
- Reaction score
- 944
There is no requirement to test continuity between Live & Neutral with a multimeter?
Why would you even do this?
Have you ever done any calculations with parallel resistors to see what the combined resistance value is?
:C
phil d
Well-known member
As @SL says testing live to neutral with a multimeter is pointless, it won't reveal anything useful because you are only testing at a low voltage, the only time I do a low voltage continuity test like you describe is if I want to see just how bad a fault is, if you get a fault that shows up with a standard multimeter then you know it's a bad one. A point to remember with connected loads is that most stuff will have transformers in them and these will give a low resistance reading which is one reason why you make sure everything is disconnected when doing a test, if you are unsure you link live and neutral together and test between them and earth as there's less chance of blowing something up.
Similar threads
