Any Electricians In Da House?
Chaos_Llama
Join Date: 2004-04-23 Member: 28124Members
Join Date: 2004-04-23 Member: 28124Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">My home might burn down :(</div> As the topic title says, i need help from an electrician.
Anyways, about an hour ago i replaced a faulty light switch. I turned off the main breaker and disconnected the lightswitches. I saw a copper wire (not covered in rubber) in the back of the light case and assumed it was the ground. Is it the ground? I screwed in the 3 wires and turned the power back on. The breaker box sparked and i freaked out and shut it off.
Then as a test i removed the wires i thought were the ground from the lightswitches and turned back on the main breaker. No sparks.
So here's what im wondering. Were those wires grounds and the breaker sparking, should i be worried about that? I didnt notice any electrical burning smell.
Pls help me! I dont want my house to go on fire and my parents super **** at me! <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Anyways, about an hour ago i replaced a faulty light switch. I turned off the main breaker and disconnected the lightswitches. I saw a copper wire (not covered in rubber) in the back of the light case and assumed it was the ground. Is it the ground? I screwed in the 3 wires and turned the power back on. The breaker box sparked and i freaked out and shut it off.
Then as a test i removed the wires i thought were the ground from the lightswitches and turned back on the main breaker. No sparks.
So here's what im wondering. Were those wires grounds and the breaker sparking, should i be worried about that? I didnt notice any electrical burning smell.
Pls help me! I dont want my house to go on fire and my parents super **** at me! <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Comments
Oh, and if neither your breaker set off a fire nor near the light bulb there should be no other place for a fire to break out because these are the only places where teh shrot-circuit might cause a fire (besides the switch)
To answer your question, yes, the bare wire is always ground, unless your house was wired by the worst electrician ever. You should not, however, just push that wire into the back of the box, that wire goes on the green screw that should be on the bottom left corner of the switch.
It would be good to know what kind of switch this is. How many screws does it have on it BESIDES the green one?
And also, you screwed in 3 wires to the switch, you didn't screw the white wire on there, did you?
White wire on top, Black wire on bottom.
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
YAY!!
"He's sooo dreamy!"
White wire on top, Black wire on bottom. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok, try this, pull the switch out of the wall with the wires still on it (with the power off of course) make sure none of them are touching, then turn it on. Any bare wire touching the box itself would cause a short like that.
<i>always</i>
oh wait.....
It only sparked when i had the ground plugged in. I unplugged the ground and the main breaker didnt spark.
From what you're telling me, I can only assume that you perhaps replaced a single-pole switch (one common to one traveler) with a 3-way switch (one common to two travelers) and put the ground on one of the travelers. In which case........don't do that anymore, I guess is all I can tell you, since from what I can tell you don't know what kind of switch you bought either.
The switch that was on before was a single pole switch, a switch with 2 screws, one for a feed wire, and the other for a switched wire. When the switch is "Off" the power goes nowhere, when the switch is "On" the power goes throught the switched wire. Now what you bought was a 3-way switch, which is meant for use with 1 feed and 2 switched wires. When the switch is down (notice I did not say off) the power would go through one of the wires, when it is up, the power would go through the other wire. Now what you did is you put the feed on the correct screw, but you put the ground on one of the switched screws, when it should have gone on a seperate green ground screw.
The screws arent color coded.
So which is the which?
Theres one screw on the left and two screws on the right.
If not, just leave the ground in the box and be content with the fact that your house is now illegal.
What do you mean illegal? Maybe not in all areas. Im in Canada.
next time I need help with building an a-bomb or tying sailor's knots or making fudge, I know exactly where to turn...
Anyways, thanks alot for the help!
Your the best! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
next time I need help with building an a-bomb or tying sailor's knots or making fudge, I know exactly where to turn... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can make the fudge, just dont expect anyone to help you "pack" the fudge.
next time I need help with building an a-bomb or tying sailor's knots or making fudge, I know exactly where to turn... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Looks like you got yourself quite the evening out planned there, I'll be sure to read about it in all the papers.
"Man eating fudge ties self to homemade a-bomb using extremely well-crafted sailor's knots"
next time I need help with building an a-bomb or tying sailor's knots or making fudge, I know exactly where to turn... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Looks like you got yourself quite the evening out planned there, I'll be sure to read about it in all the papers.
"Man eating fudge ties self to homemade a-bomb using extremely well-crafted sailor's knots" <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
oh noes! another of my evil plans, foiled before I even bought the uranium <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
To answer your question, yes, the bare wire is always ground, unless your house was wired by the worst electrician ever. You should not, however, just push that wire into the back of the box, that wire goes on the green screw that should be on the bottom left corner of the switch.
It would be good to know what kind of switch this is. How many screws does it have on it BESIDES the green one?
And also, you screwed in 3 wires to the switch, you didn't screw the white wire on there, did you? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would have asked what country he was from before assuming he was from the same one as me "Mr Electrician"
Different countries have different colour coding on their wires and use different voltages.....
How about a topic titled "HELP THERE'S A GUY CHASING ME!!!11 <i>and he has a knife</i>"?
Canada = pwned
How about a topic titled "HELP THERE'S A GUY CHASING ME!!!11 <i>and he has a knife</i>"? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah something like that would probably have been useful to me 4 weeks ago <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Different countries have different colour coding on their wires and use different voltages..... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Green or bare is ALWAYS ground, no matter what country you go to. And even if he was froma different country, and I had told him to put the white wire somewhere, he couldn't have done anything wrong since most other countries don't use white at all.
next time I need help with building an a-bomb or tying sailor's knots or making fudge, I know exactly where to turn... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Looks like you got yourself quite the evening out planned there, I'll be sure to read about it in all the papers.
"Man eating fudge ties self to homemade a-bomb using extremely well-crafted sailor's knots" <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
sig'd
Different countries have different colour coding on their wires and use different voltages..... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Green or bare is ALWAYS ground, no matter what country you go to. And even if he was froma different country, and I had told him to put the white wire somewhere, he couldn't have done anything wrong since most other countries don't use white at all. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wrong
It's stripped yellow and green in the UK....and before you say "it's still got green in" it's striped for a very good reason so that colour blind people can tell what it is.
You forgot to consider that there might not even be an earth in this fitting some countries require an earth in all switches/fittings and some do not. The Uk does as a far as I know but it never used to so there are still a lot of older buildings with no earths in some switches/fittings. To make matters worse many old buildings still use the old wiring system of black and red as opposed to the new one of blue, brown and green/yellow stripe.
As I said before different countries use different colour coding systems some like the UK even have more than one colour system.
Before giving someone advice on something as dangerous as fiddling with electrical wiring you really should know what your talking about and not assume anything especially when you cannot see the switch/fitting in question.