08/21/2026
Is this junction illegal? This was hidden in the back corner of a little cubby hole in my attic. You would never notice it unless you knew it was there and were looking for it. It was hidden under that square piece of subflooring with the screw in it, very neatly and carefully replaced making it very hard to notice. The only way I found it was because I was using a wire tracer and traced the wire back to it and only upon scrutinizing it did I notice the screws and seams.
As you can see, he also took the liberty of sawing through both of the top plates of the wall that it's on top of, for no other purpose than making enough room to get the piece of subfloor to fit back over the junction box.
This is in an area where an exposed junction box would have been perfectly fine because it's in an attic space that will never be finished, and there are all kinds of exposed ducts and vents in there anyways. I can't imagine why he went to so much trouble to conceal it, vs. just putting an exposed junction box there.
The reason I found it is because I knew there had to be a blind splice somewhere, because I had traced the circuit to all of the plugs and switches, and I knew there had to be a hidden junction somewhere, hence why I was using the radio wire tracer.
The plot thickens still because the reason I was tracing the circuit is we've been having issues with nuisance tripping on that breaker from day one, so I was systematically unwiring all the junctions looking for a loose connection or shared neutral or whatever.
The reason the electricians gave for needing to cut into the subfloor was that they were missing a run of romex from one floor plug to another (the one in the last photo), but that run to the floor plug was in fact there and by all accounts seems perfectly fine, but they left it floating, capped off inside the box. I've tested it extensively, and there's absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with it.
The junction appears to serve no other purpose than to bring a 20 in run of romex from another circuit into that floor plug, which I can't even begin to comprehend, because like I said the appropriate circuit that that floor plug was supposed to be on, with its mates, was run into the box and is perfectly healthy.
What the electrician had told me was that he needed to cut a small hole in the subfloor up there to fish out a wire to power the floor plug so that he wouldn't have to rip up the attic's subfloor to run it from the next nearest floor plug. He said nothing about concealing a junction box up there, and certainly didn't say anything about sawing through both the wall's top plates.
I can't even theorize at this point that they were trying to cover up a mistake because like I said the floor plugs were daisy-chained together like they should have been (they just left the last one capped off and floating inside the floor plug's box. At this point the only thing I can even begin to imagine is that they were somehow sabotaging things and or creating false pretexts to get more hours on the job. I did overhear them complaining about not getting enough hours.
Anyways, sorry for the long story, but I'm just wondering if this fits some known shenanigans, like if this is some dirty trick that's known to the industry or something.
Incidentally, after I unwired this circuit, the nuisance tripping has progressively gotten much, much less frequent. I'm still able to make some breakers trip, but we're down to one breaker nuisance tripping, and I have to pull a much bigger load for a lot longer, whereas prior to systematically unwiring this circuit with the blind junction it was pretty much a given that it was going to trip if I pulled much of a load anywhere in the duplex.
P.S. The reason I'm basically having to teach myself to be an electrician and do all this myself is we've had many different electricians and linemen and techs and even an actual electrical engineer from the power company all banging their heads against the wall completely unable to explain our issues. That's another reason why I'm starting to suspect sabotage because I just can't imagine that an honest mistake or normal fault like a screw in a wire could be this difficult to diagnose, and here now I've found very clear evidence of deception and what appears to be a very intentional attempt to hide what they did for reasons that make zero sense on any level.
