I recently was having some HVAC issues with a heat pump blower motor not running. Being comfortable using a multimeter, I opened up the panel to the furnace and was checking voltages on the capacitor and blower motor when one of the hot power wires arced by touching the metal furnace. I now have a complete loss of power to the furnace. Immediately after the arc, the dual gang 35 amp breakers tripped. I reset the breaker to find that the power was still not reaching the furnace at all. I checked the wires coming out of the breaker with a non-contact voltage meter and confirmed voltage is coming out of the breakers.
There is only about 8 feet of wire from the main electrical panel where the breakers are and the 8 gauge wire coming into the furnace electrical panel. The wire coming out of the breaker leads goes up in my attic into nearly inaccessible areas before coming down through the ceiling into the furnace panel. I checked the resistance between the breaker and the input of the furnace power and there was no connectivity. The ohm meter was 0.L, if the wires were good, there should be connectivity.
QUESTION: Is it possible for both 8 gauge wires coming out of the two 35 amp breakers to completely burn out so as to not be able to feed power to the furnace because one of them arc'ed? If so, is the 8 gauge wires being burned and not providing current the only scenario or could something else be amiss with the wires feeding the furnace from the breaker?
I went up in the attic and tried to investigate any visual failures from the 8 gauge wire but I was not able to find any nor could I get a non-contact voltage detector to work on any of the 8 gauge wires since the sheath is too thick.