[joju11]

I nicked an electric wire with a drill bit mounting a shelf on the wall, it blew a breaker. I have reset breaker and the circuit is working fine. Should I tear into wall and repair the wire?
Thanks for any suggestions
John

[labman]

Fortunately you seem to be OK. The safest thing would be to open up the wall and repair any damage. How big is the hole? Can you actually see if you really nicked the wire? If you just scraped the insulation away and the wire itself is in good shape, it may be OK. You might try to coat the bare spot with glue or something. If part of the wire is gone, it would act like too small of a wire and heat up, possibly setting the wall on fire. To prevent that, you would then have to splice it. All wire splices must be in a box with an accessible cover. Another alternative might be if you can locate the 2 boxes on either side of the nick, would be to disconnect the wire at the one box and pull it out at the other. You could then inspect it, and then tape it back up and pull it back in. If it is damaged, you could replace the whole section of wire and not need to set a new box. Pulling wires out will be difficult at best, and impossible with the newer plastic boxes where the wires are secured by stapling them to the studs. If you pull any wires out, tie twine to them first to use to pull a wire back in. Good luck! Simple jobs sometimes aren't so simple.