MetaChat - Let there be light...

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25 July 2010

Let there be light... I could use some advice about replacing a light fixture, please.→[More:]

I'm working in the basement apartment of my house. I took down the old light fixture and found that there were two sets of wires, each stemming from opposite sides of the ceiling. I am reasonably sure that when I took down the old fixture, one set of black and white wires was just twisted together and capped, although it *might* have been that a white wire from the one set was capped with a black wire from the other set.

So, when I put the new fixture in, I retwisted and capped the one set of wires, and connected the other set of wires to the fixture. When I flipped the main power switch again the light bulb in the fixture came on when wired this way, but the light switch no longer operated it. So I took the thing down again and wired the second set of wires to the light fixture as well. The light fixture still worked but the light switch still didn't work.

I'm stumped. How should I wire the fixture so that the light switch will connect to it again?

post by: Orange Swan at: 14:46 | 7 comments

I think one of these might help you.

It almost sounds like there is more than one light fixture controlled by the switch (or, maybe, there used to be more than one ...) Most likely, you need to connect one black wire to one white wire and the remaining wires to each side of the light fixture, but it might take some guesswork to figure out which one. Before I pull things like this apart, I take a photo ot he connections because I can never remember where they came from ...

posted by dg 25 July | 18:10

Yeah, either those were control wires running to a removed switch, or to another light fixture in serial. But it almost sounds like the other wires were live, so the fixture was powered regardless of what the switch did. That's a bit weird, actually.

The good news is that you didn't trip the breaker by causing a short.

When I had a confusing wiring problem I took photos and posted them to AskMe.

posted by dhartung 26 July | 10:09

I think what I'm going to do is experiment some more and connect a white wire from one set to a black wire from the other, like dg suggested, see if it works.

Thanks, you two.

posted by Orange Swan 26 July | 21:48

Just in case the late Orange Swan's lawyers are reading this, I don't recommend experimenting with electricity.

posted by dg 27 July | 02:12

No, not a good idea generally. But I figure the worst that will likely happen is the breaker gets tripped and I'll need to flip the main switch for the house off and on again.

posted by Orange Swan 27 July | 08:31

Just in case the late Orange Swan's lawyers are reading this, I don't recommend experimenting with electricity.

Ha!

posted by deborah 27 July | 15:21

In case anyone's interested, I fixed the light this past Sunday. All I had to do was take a black wire from the one side and a white wire from the other and cap them together. Light worked, light switch turned it on and off, no untoward electrical incidents occurred, no legal action required.

Thanks all!

posted by Orange Swan 04 August | 08:18

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