I was finishing my basement ceiling, and in all of the banging, two outlets in the living room above lost power. (The breaker is fine.) I tested the outlets and these two now read "open neutral."

The outlets are adjacent to one another on the same wall.

These seem to be the only two affected.

Do you think the problem is in the outlets or in the junction box (wherever that may be)?

Also, is this dangerous?

Likely in one of those 2 boxes, or box right next in line(prior to the bad ones)

Hmmm... it's a really long, expansive circuit -- how can I tell what's before/ after?

Turn off that circuit, see what all went out, then check closest box(s) physically to the bad ones.

OK, so I pulled the two outlets out, and the two adjacent ones, too, and the wires all seem to be connected properly and everything is nice and tight.

So, now, I know of ONE j-box to check for the connections. But there must be others in the walls, right, that are unseen? How do I check which connection it is?

Are the wires under screws or stuck in the back? There should be no junction boxes in that wall that are unseen.

Your junction boxes are going to be atached to your joists... try tracing the wire... you could have punctured the wire some how in the line between the two outlets... sounds like it just came lose in a junction box though

Not sure if its feisible but you could check for continunity on the WIRE between the last working outlet and the first bad one... if you don't have continunity then your wire is the problem... if you do then your outlet is mostlikly bad

Are you wrapping wires around screw, or pushing in hole in the back?
Backstabbing is famous for problems.

Edit, Sorry HK, didn't see your mention of "backstabbing"

No "backstabbing": I tried it once but couldn't fit the wiring back in the box that way.

OK, so here's the diagnosis: it's not the two dead outlets -- it's the junction box feeding them. There is a neutral wire in the metal box that is severed just as it peeks out of the BX cable.

How do I fix this? There's very little play in the BX, so I can't just pull more out and re-connect it.

And if I wanted to cut the BX sheath, how would I do that? (Keep in mind, its in a jbox at the ceiling, with most of the BX back in the joists under drywall.)

Greenlee makes a flexible tubing cutter/BX, don't use on live circuits.
You can add a box and cover, short piece of wire, if necessary to complete the circuit.

Do you have access to the wire feeding the power to the jbox?

If so you could relocate the box to a closer point so you will have some more slack in the wire that goes up through your walls,

Make sure you use a meeter to confirm all power is off at the box, and then just replace the feed wire, if you can't do this... you could cut the feed wire and add another Jbox at a lower point in your feed wire and run a longer one to your existing Jbox from the new Box

I know that might be confusing

Let me know

Ps I'm not sure if this is a violation of any codes, pretty sure its not though.

Fixed!

OK, well, the big problem was that the j-box had 4 cables coming in from 4 different directions, and very little slack in any of them, so relocating wasn't going to work without pigtailing all of them, and then making junction boxes for each pigtail, not to mention cutting into the ceiling in several places.

What I did was use a hacksaw blade to gently remove 2 inches of BX. This took forever since the BX was barely coming out of the ceiling. I then moved the box 2 inches closer. I pigtailed the short wire to extend it, and joined all 4 cable in the j-box.

Not pleasant work doing all of this in a 6"x6" access panel in the ceiling.

Thanks for everyone's guidance!

The story continues: I am now getting shocked in the shower...

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/electr...ml#post1247125

If you have access to the junction box and the bx, such as from the attic space, you can simply remove the affected wire from the box, cut it back and add a second junction box where you cut it. Then add a wire from the new box to the old. Make sense? Secure all connections, keep the boxes accessible, and mount them securely. And don't forget the covers.

Great advice! That's basically what I did -- except I was able to pull enough wire to avoid the new junction box.

Have you seen my newest problem re: grounding?