Replacing light fixture - box doesn't seem to have a neutral wire.

Khavall

Hey H/A, I've got hopefully a simple one.

I recently bought a house, and am in the process of renovating.

It's an older house, and a lot of the work before that has been done on it was done really shoddily, either by amateurs who didn't follow directions or didn't care, or really crappy contractors. I'm currently replacing most of the light fixtures, and there has been a relative march of problems on each one(One fan/light combo only had one screw in the mounting plate, for instance, and was just hanging there.)

Currently I'm trying to replace the master bedroom light, and I'm looking at this:

I'm assuming that the red is hot, that much I have figured out.

Are the three beige wires that are wound together the neutral? The white wire came out really, really easily when I removed it before, so I didn't see where it was going. Is it possible that they did the super unsafe attaching the neutral to the ground? I know I shouldn't do that, so where the hell do I put my white wire?

Soggybiscuit

A couple of questions:

1) Does this light have a three way switch?
2) It looks like the red wire comes from a separate cable, or is it wire-nutted together with the black wires? (my guess is a separate wire in the third cable)


But yeah, in home wiring (typical): Black is hot, white is neutral, and green or bare is ground. Red is used in cable for three way switches. Fixture wires have a tendency to come loose after a while.

Do you have a multimeter? If so, and you're feeling adventurous: Check black to white, black to red, black to ground, white to ground, and red to ground. It needs to be done with the circuit hot, so if you don't feel safe checking it then DO NOT DO IT.

My guess as to the results (if it's wired up how I think it is):

Black to white: 120V
Black to ground: 120V
Black to red: should be 0V
Red to white: switch off: 0V, switch on, 120V
Red to ground: switch off: 0V, switch on, 120V
White to ground: should be 0V

Khavall

There's no three-way switch, no. Though that doesn't mean that there wasn't one before, that was replaced with the previous fan. The previous fan was put in pretty recently I think.

Also I probably won't be doing the multimeter thing... don't really want to die and don't know enough about circuits to do anything without dying.

I should also note that other than pulling the red down a bit, the caps and everything are exactly how they were with the functioning fan installed, and I don't think anything was going to the black. Unfortunately I'm not out there today, but I can look at it tomorrow to see if the red was going to its own thing or not.

schuss

worst comes to worst, you can usually ground to things like that mount screw on the box.

Khavall

Yeah I'm fine with ground, It's the (normally white) neutral I need. Like are those tan ones just the return/neutral/white? And is there a reason they're three instead of one? And all tied together?

Daenris

Most likely they continue on to the next switch/light/etc in the circuit.

Kakodaimonos

I'd get a voltage tester also. Splices like that may or may not be on the circuit the light is on. I've gotten an unpleasant surprise when I hit a hot wire on a splice I thought was off but didn't test.

Djeet

You use a multimeter or some kind of voltage pen to reduce your risk of dying via electrocution. If you don't want to use basic tools then I think you should hire someone to do this job instead. We have no idea how this was wired and if the person who did it followed convention.

Slo

95% chance of your neutral being those tan conductors. The white lead from the light was probably just poorly put under the wire nut.

The only other possible way this was working previously was if they tied the light neutral to the ground as a return path, but I doubt it (As that's crazy talk)

That being said, a voltage pen is like, 12$ and could easily identify the hot conductors for you if you're worried about it.

-Electrician

Khavall

Ok, I'll look for a voltage pen to make sure, and hopefully it's nice and easy and the tan is the neutral, and everything works well.

Thanks!

Slo

Khavall wrote: »

Ok, I'll look for a voltage pen to make sure, and hopefully it's nice and easy and the tan is the neutral, and everything works well.

Thanks!

Just be sure to check the wires in both switch states, on and off.

Khavall

Will do.

Managed to hang all the other lights by now too, so hopefully this one ends up working.

DrunkMc

Do you have access to the attic? I learned a lot about teh wiring of my house by going into the attic and figuring out what was wired to what. That may help if you have access. Physically trace where those wires are going! The answer my surprise you.

Figgy

I am not an electrician, but I'd attach neutral to beige, black to black, and cap off the red.

The red is likely for a ceiling fan installation, as you want the fan itself to be able to power on even if the light switch is turned off. That red wire is always live. Cap it off if you're just installing a regular light.

I've seen multiple neutral wires twisted together on many occasions, in light fixture boxes and electrical outlet boxes.

tuxkamen

Figgy wrote: »

I am not an electrician, but I'd attach neutral to beige, black to black, and cap off the red.

The red is likely for a ceiling fan installation, as you want the fan itself to be able to power on even if the light switch is turned off. That red wire is always live. Cap it off if you're just installing a regular light.

I've seen multiple neutral wires twisted together on many occasions, in light fixture boxes and electrical outlet boxes.

Three neutrals together is extremely common for light fixtures.

Slo

Figgy wrote: »

I am not an electrician, but I'd attach neutral to beige, black to black, and cap off the red.

The red is likely for a ceiling fan installation, as you want the fan itself to be able to power on even if the light switch is turned off. That red wire is always live. Cap it off if you're just installing a regular light.

I've seen multiple neutral wires twisted together on many occasions, in light fixture boxes and electrical outlet boxes.

Your black is probably your constant power, red is usually switched. Looking at the wire that is there, you wouldn't have three switched conductors (those three blacks) in a single box in a house, unless you had one switch controlling three items, which is pretty rare.

Whats probably going on here, is you have one black/white wire bringing power from somewhere, one black/white/red going down to a switch box, and one black/white feeding power to another item. The black probably jumps down to a switch, then out to a plug somewhere, which is why it needs the neutral along with the red switch leg.

(The reason why red is typically the switched conductor, is that in NA two wire rolls of cable come in Black+White, and MOST wiring requires constant power, so it became the standard as constant)

That being said, there could be another junction box in the ceiling and all the colours could be swapped around. With Electrical, every day is an adventure.

Khavall

Ok, quick update, grabbed the multimeter and the light is finally installed, and Red was hot. I think they actually just had extra wire when they did some of the initial wiring and just didn't care(This house is about 40 years old), because while changing out one of the light switches I had one neutral wire that was red with some white paint on it(And yes, I made sure to test that one)

The tan trio was neutral.

Also, Almost all of the electricity in the upper level is now completed, so yay!

Thanks everyone.