Finding a breaker box

[Drew]

My house is a typical 50s or 60s era South Florida house built near the beach, it was originally a 2/1 but at some point before I bought it the back was extended and a living room was added along with another bedroom and bathroom. I only have 1 breaker box that I know of but I just found out it doesn't turn off the power in the add-on to the house. I've checked everywhere for another box not in any room in the house, I've even looked in the attic. Does anyone know how I can trace the wires to wherever the box is without ripping all my drywall out?

[Parkbandit]

Pick up a good electrical wire tracer for $50 will do the trick.

[Drew]

Yeah I thought of that but don't I need to know where the wire terminates for that to work? The problem is I don't know where these wires are running to.

[Parkbandit]

Yeah I thought of that but don't I need to know where the wire terminates for that to work? The problem is I don't know where these wires are running to.

You have one end... the electrical outlet. Part of the tracer goes into that.. and then you can trace back the wire to the box.

[Archigeek]

Strange that you can't find a box. Is there a main power shut off switch upstream from the breaker box somewhere? It's possible that they built the addition up stream from your breaker box, and never included any other breakers. There could just be a J-box with a connection (or even no J-box) and that's it. A dangerous situation if that's the case.

[AnticorRifling]

Yeah if they just piggy backed it that's no fuego.

[Mogonis]

How did you test the panelboard to see if it shut off power to the addition? Are the breaker labels/descriptions still legible? Assuming this addition was inspected, your city or county should have record of it. Otherwise something's fishy and probably not to whatever the NEC was when the addition was built.

[Drew]

How did you test the panelboard to see if it shut off power to the addition? Are the breaker labels/descriptions still legible?

I turned off all the breakers and it didn't turn the power off in the addition.

[Mogonis]

So there's no main breaker? If it's a Main Lug (Only) panel, there has to be a Main Breaker panel or some way of shutting off power somewhere upstream from the house. If you switched all the breakers to Off, the whole house, minus the addition, was without power?

[jpatter123]

I turned off all the breakers and it didn't turn the power off in the addition.

They may have just tied into the main feed where it comes into the panel. If you feel competent enough to remove the face panel on the breaker box and snap a picture and post it up I can get a look. A lot of the old houses here, were done with very small services like 100 AMP or even smaller where today's construction is done with 150 AMP or larger(our homes were done with 200 AMP min). Very good possibility they didn't have any room in the box to add a breaker so just piggy backed and ran a straight hot to the new construction (or have a hidden sub panel somewhere, even though you've looked you'd be surprised at the places I've seen them hidden even dry-walled in or buried under hard coat). Anyhow post some pics maybe we can get it sorted.
If it's just a case of them tying into the feed coming in, it's easy to rectify with several solutions depending on what type of wiring and panel you have in place.