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| Subject - no voltage between hot & neutral | |
| spakus |
Hi, I was troubleshooting some inoperative walkway lighting and found that there was no voltage between the hot pin and neutral shell of the lampholder...but between the hot and ground there was 120v and between the shell and ground there was 120v. I did not have have too much time to dig into this and will return this week. The home has a new owner who is not available to question about any recent electrical work or if the lights ever worked. Any thoughts on where to start looking? Steve |
| John A. Peters | We call that a "lost neutral" Check all the white wire connections. I am assuming there is more than one lamp holder on the line. |
| spakus | Thanks John, I went back and pulled a few of the fixtures apart and they all seem to be correctly wired. The fixtures are walkway lights that are set into brick going up an outside stairway. So there are brick halfwalls and concrete steps....now each of the fixtures only has one 12-2 romex coming into it. There does not appear to be any j-boxes so I don't get how they originaly wired these. The switch is a single pole, and all looks good in that box. There is no continuity between the neutral and ground. Looks like these may not be fixable, at least not without a jackhammer. The part that I can't grasp is 120v between the neutral and ground. Thanks for your help. Steve |
| kbsparky | quote: You are reading pass-thru voltage that is traveling from the hot wire through the lamp filaments to the (open) neutral. Try shorting the neutral and ground wires together. I'd be willing to bet that the lights start working again  Of course, you can't leave it like that. You need to get that neutral wire reconnected to the circuit. Otherwise, you'll have a potentially dangerous situation on your hands  You might want to consider back-feeding that circuit with another piece of romex (uf??) to one of the fixtures. |
| spakus | thanks for the info, i should be able to feed the lights by drilling through the fixture/brick, then running some 12-2 uf to an outdoor receptacle. the total load is 200 watts or 1.8 approx amps, if i only pick up the neutral will it get overheated? i suppose i could backfeed them and use x-10 to switch them. thanks |