How to Test Continuity With a Meter

When you test continuity, your are testing whether whether electricity is able to travel between two points (poles) on an electrical circuit. Such testing, when carefully applied, can be used to test everything from electrical sockets to motors and even light switches. By testing these items, you can determine where a fault specifically lies in the operation of an electrical device -- whether it is the electrical circuit feeding a device or a component within the device itself.

How to Test the Continuity of a Circuit

• 1

  Turn off all electricity to the circuit that is to be tested. For a motor or appliance this should only require unplugging it from its electrical source. If you're testing a wall socket or other electrical service circuit, you'll want to turn off the circuit at the junction box.

• 2

  Set the multimeter to the Ohm setting (represented by the "Ω" symbol). If there are multiple ohm options, set it to the X1 or 1X setting. An ohm is a measure of how much resistance there is in an electrical circuit and reads as a number ranging from zero (no resistance) to one (no continuity).

• 3

  Touch the probes from the meter on the points of the circuit you wish to test. These locations will vary depending on what you're testing -- to test a wall outlet, for example, one would insert the red meter's probe into the positive slot and the black meter's probe into the neutral slot.

• 4

  Read what happens to the meter while the probes are both touching the circuit. If the probe reads "0", then the circuit has continuity. If the meter reads "1" or "infinite" (∞) then the circuit is not able to carry electricity and lacks continuity.