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We will try to answer all questions you ask concerning your Home Electrical wiring system. We have tried to make the site as fair as possible, giving a couple of ways to ask your questions and get an answer in a very unbiased way. We will answer any question you ask concerning your Home or business Electrical wiring system. We do recommend you hire a state certified electrical contractor to get a safe installation. We do hope you will find your answer here and get some basic questions out of the way before you hire. This is not a sales or world wide website that carries you all over the world.
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In this particular 40 0r 50 year old ‘Jim Walters’ home, one electrical box has two light switches. One switch turns on and off two wall outlets, the other turns on and off the ceiling light. Their are 4 sets of romex in the box. Someone removed the two switches. How do I wire them all back together, determine which goes to the ceiling light, and substitute that switch with with a toggle dimmer switch? The dimmer switch has a red, green, and black wire. What a mess! Please help if you can, as I am extremely stymied, because no one labeled the wires upon removing the switches.
If you can’t use a meter to find your switch legs, you will have to call a licensed electrician. If you can find your switch legs let me know.
I am installing a fan w/light kit. The fan has a blue wire (for light kit) a white wire and a black wire. The wire coming out of my ceiling box is white, black and red. Do I hook up the white wire to white, black to black and blue to red? I also have a ground which I assume goes to the ground from the fan?
Please advise.
Thank You,
Rich
The standard is what you have quoted as far as colors (white to white, black to black, red to blue). Just make sure, if you have a volt meter check the black for continuous hot (directly from breaker) and the red for a switched hot (by switching your switch on and off while you have the meter connected). remember, First just make sure you turn off your breaker. good luck
had power running from panel to 1 outlet everything was fine decided to add a light put junction box in power to outlet never changed added light switch everything was fine use one of those amish heaters ran fine for days not all the time light and switch still work fine smelled like something burning the other day unplugged the heater for a day never thought any more of it plugged vacum in to use it no power in outlet checked wire with my beeper thing beeped as it was hot somthing to worry about or just a bad receptical
I would call a licensed electrician to look at it.
We have a commercial building with 480/208/277(for lighting) and supposably 120 Volts. Why are we getting 104 volts at each outlet? What could be the cause? Thank you…
Most likely old connections that need servicing. need to have your main service looked at. Also, there could problem in the circuit itself.
just bought a light fixture and the 3 wires on the fixture are not identified! through investigation if figured out which is the ground but how do i know which wire hooks to the hot and which wire hooks up to the neutral?
Are there any strips on the wire? If no stripes, look for grooves on the insulation.
i want to continue the power from overhead light to other receptacles
OK, so what do you want to connect? What type of rec? need voltages too.
why cant i get perspective fault current reading when my earth is connected ?
?, not enough clarity on question.
Hello,
I was hoping you can give me some assistance wiring smoke / carbon monoxide / heat detectors in my home.
I have read up on the smoke and it seems easy enough: hot, neutral, and interconnect. My understanding is if one smoke is triggered it sends a signal through the interconnect to the other sensors in different areas of the house.
My question: can I hook up carbon monoxide sensors in series with the smoke detectors. Same question for the heat detectors. Will the interconnect work with different sensors?
Thanks for your help.
It depends on model
I am installing 4 Metal Halide light fixtures at 1500 W each at 240 V on a pole. Each fixture pulls about 7 amps. What type wire do I need to run for this amount of lighting? 10 guage or 12 guage?
Well lets see, 1500W x 4 = 6000 Total watts, so I=P/e, I=6000/240, I=25Amps, NEC table 316 – #10 would be your size.
DOES IT MATTER HOW TALL THE UTILITY POLE IS CAUSE A 25 FT. POLE IS LESS EXPENSIVE THAN A 30 FT. OR 35FT. POLE. ITS FOR A METER LOOP.
Is it across a driveway – residential or commercial?
when installing hospital grade outlets does it matter if ground is up or down?
Yes, if i remember correctly it depends on the location in the medical facility.
I have an RV wiring question. We recently bought a resort property and they have 4 existing rv sites that are wired with #8 UF in one run that supplies 20 amp service to each site. We are going to provide 30 amp service to those sites. I wanted to know which is the proper way to wire this as my partner and I are having a bit of a difference in opinion. He wants to run two 30 amp sites off one #8 wire to a 50 amp breaker in the panel. I however think we need to run seperate #8 wire runs to each site and all be on their own 30 amp breaker in the sub-panel. My worry is if two rv’s run their a/c and nuke a burger it will opo the breaker and they will both be out of power. I just want to make sure we are not going to ruin ourselves and our reputation by having the breakers go every 30 minutes because we are under wired. Please help.
You are right, who would want to live with that worry. Life is too short. Yes add the 30amp circuits with a sub-panel. Make sure you use 4-wire system out to each RV pads. You will have a 2-hots,1-nuetral and 1-ground. Run any data lines in same ditch but in different conduit no less than 3-6 inches apart.
question . how do you calculate current imbalance ? like for instance, L1 has 1.97 amps , L2 has 1.99 amps ,L3 has 2.01 amps. what is the % ? please .
Why do want to calculate imbalance? Can you not just balance the service using a ampmeter?
Question ? the deference from Y to delta transformers
Delta wound Transformer – Plant industrial uses (Motor loads) uses high leg for high current motor applications
Y wound Transformer- Malls, mostly public buildings (lighting loads) no high leg needed for low current lighter loads
I have 3 electrical wires pigtailed together and everything works but when i turn the bedroom light off it flips breaker off. That is the only switch that flips the breaker. What do I need to do?
You have a short. A short of this kind should be looked at by a Licensed Master electrician. Be very careful and leave this switch off until it has been examined.
In new facilities all our panels have some individual branch circuits tied together by three pole breakers causing common trip between circuits un-related to each other (offices and equipment). All these circuits are in MC cable. I can find no reason for this in the NEC.Why would this be done?
I don’t quite understand, are you saying you have a 3-pole breaker in each of these (sub) panels wired to each other in series??
In all the panels individual 20 amp branch cicuits feeding recpt’s in offices and other rooms the circuits are landed on three pole breakers instead of indvidual single pole breakers. This results in three circuits tripping instead of just the one .
YOU NEED TO REPLACE THE 3-POLE BREAKERS WITH SINGLE-POLE BREAKERS. MAKE SURE THEY ARE SIZED ACCORDING TO THE BRANCH CIRCUIT WIRE SIZES. IF INCORRECTLY SIZED, IT CAN CAUSE HEAT BUILD UP AND CAUSE A POTENTIALLY BIGGER PROBLEM
I could do that except this is a brand new building and all the branch circuit outlets including 277V lighting were done this way by the contractor. I would have to assume the engineer spected it that way, I was just trying to figure out why because it makes no sense to me or anyone else in the maintenance dept. Could it be because all the circuts are in MC cable sharing a nuetral?
I am back, do you know if there are contactors between the breaker and the lights? If not, Do you know if these lights have an emergency backup ballast too? If they do have an emergency ballast, that ballast may be sharing a neutral but on a different circuit and if the normal power is cut off it may affect the ballast on the emergency circuit. This could be a method used to prevent a problem if the normal power circuit breaker was accidently cut off.
There are relay panels between the breakers and the lights. Both the buildings are on a programable, computer controled, energy management system that uses low voltage controls of those relays to turn lights on and off. All the room lights are turned on/off by low voltage control switches tied into the system or by motion sensors. This would however not explain why all the 120V recpt circuits are all on 3-pole breakers as well. We have had a few instances in which an appliance plugged into a recpt tripped the breaker controling that circuit that resulted in the other two circuits tied with the first being tripped as well . As I said before ALL individual branch circuits were tied together in this way .
because I am not looking at the building system, I am limited on what I can diagnose. But you may need to trace out your neutrals to find out why they may have needed the 3-pole breakers. I have seen a new energy management system that had to have an extra neutral for dimming purposes. That system only dimmed half the high bays themselves (in other words every high bay had power at the same time but this one wire adjusted the light level in the building by dimming half of the each high bay. This caused us to have to use that extra wire all the way around the building and when you cut of one breaker it was tied to a contactor that opened all circuits at the energy management system.
Are you sure the branch circuits are feed straight to the contactors? This includes every wire, hots,neutrals, grounds,etc
You situation sounds similar to something I discovered.A few years ago.
The engineer would not have made a mistake like that surely? Well I have seen them guys make plenty of mistakes come to think about it. But anyway,
There are no contactors for the lights, only special lighting panels with banks of relays controled by the computer. The low voltage switches tied to the system can be programed to turn all or some of the lights on/off. These panels are between the circuit breakers and the lights. I dont think the has anything to do with 3-pole breaker issue because the 120V branch circuits which are not part of the energy management system are all on 3-pole breakers as well. I was wondering if this was done since all the home runs are in four conductor MC cable and the three circuits tied together thus share a nuetral. If you can’t figure out an answer based on what I’ve told you to this point I’ll drop it here and try to get an answer from the local code body since this may be a local code ( there’s nothing in the NEC that I know of).
I don’t think that sharing a neutral should be a reason to use a 3-pole breaker. So the branch circuit going through this 3-pole breaker go straight to the light fixtures? They would have to go thru the contactors in the energy manage system to function first then from there to the fixtures. I don’t think there is a need for this if no other special devices are using this same 3-pole branch circuit..
I am currently working on a commercial jobsite, remodeling a Beef o Brady’s. We left service loops on each of the 2×4 Lay-in Florescents that were installed. The loops being approximately 3, 12inch coils for a total length of 36 inches. Upon inspection the inspector says that you are NOT allowed to coil MC like that because you will create a transformer and burnt up the MC. Myself nor my foreman have ever heard of such a thing and we were wondering if this is true. Thank you for your time! By the way this is a 120volt circuit.
Where are you located? I will make sure I don’t do a job there..HaHa
Just the opposite for me, I have inspectors and engineers have us make 6ft loops in case the fixtures ever get moved. That inspector don’t know what he is talking about in my opinion.
Haha thanks for the response. The job was in Tampa, Fl. When the second inspector showed up the following day, his first words were, ” I was looking over the notes from yesterday and I have no idea what this guy is talking about.” haha
Thanks for letting me know I was right..If you have any more electrical questions I would be glad to help with a Electrical answer..
I wonder if you could help me. Problem regards electric door opener/strike.
The electric strike (door opener) obviously is on the door frame attached to the wall and then there’s the door with its latch plate and ‘tongue’ going in and out.
The problem is this, if the door is opened (hence latch tongue not in contact with electric strike) or if the door is closed but the latch tongue is not out, is still within its compartment/latch (hence latch tongue is yet again not in contact with electric strike) then if one pushes the button to create a connection to open the door we can indeed hear the sound of it doing its job and one can feel the vibration. However, the minute the door is actually closed with the tongue within the door frame electrical latch then nothing happens, no sounds, no more current. How could this be? What is going wrong? and therefore what would need to be checked/fixed.
Both the electric door latch and the ringer upstairs have only 2 wires
thank you
Is this an automatic door opener? With button located on wall?