Electrical goofs

 Just when I think I have a grip on how to wire residential outlets and lights I do something that makes me think again.

I think of electrical as a big loop. There is Hot...which is always hot because it's coming from the panel and is searching for a path to ground...which is supplied by an appliance or lightbulb that completes the circuit. I think of Neutral as only carrying current when the circuit is completed by an appliance. If a light is off or an appliance is not plugged in then I tend to think of the Neutral wire as carrying no potential current. This is contradicted by the nature of alternating current as a back-and-forth loop, but I ignore that to make the physical installation easier to visualize. The loop begins at the hot leg of the circuit panel where the breaker is. The neutral bar also leads back to the transmission wires so it's also a source of current, but I like to think of the hot wire as the 'start' of the power.

I have a conceptualization of how the wiring must be put together to work. That doesn't mean it is correct. There are some details that I'm a little foggy about such as whether to go immediately to a junction box, or go to a GFCI outlet and then run everything from the load side of the outlet. I think, well, the junction box is just wire nuts doing the same job as the outlet. So, why not start with an outlet? There are so many junction boxes that I don't see any huge benefit to feeding the wires into a junction box and make pigtails that go into an adjacent box with an outlet. Yes, if the outlet fails then everything downstream of the outlet will lose power. And if the wires go into a junction box with pigtails leading to the outlet then if the outlet fails everything downstream will NOT lose power. I see that benefit. But using one more junction box is one more junction of wires...that enable another pigtail to the outlet. But we already recognize outlets are feed-through, meaning power passes through the elements of an outlet to get to the next outlet. So, bringing the power from the circuit panel immediately into a junction box does make it easier to branch off into different directions, but it also makes all the branches begin at that junction box. What if you want the branches to begin somewhere else? Then the circuit begins in an outlet and the whole circuit passes through that outlet to a junction box where the branches begin. A series of outlets will always have each outlet acting as a passage of current for the downstream outlets. 

I could go on and on. What's really crazy is that tradesmen who have spent far longer than I have on this subject still have not reached a consensus. The forums are filled with debates and arguments on small details to the trade.

An example came up today when I managed to replace all the aluminum wire in the house and I was having a hellish time running 12/2 yellow romex through a small hole in a beam. I was running a switch leg, which consists of a hot and a white wire that is taped with black tape. Romex has white, black and green or bare. But a light switch needs no neutral. It Does need a hot and then a wire that BECOMES HOT. This wire that becomes hot is knows as 'switched hot'. and since the black wire in the romex was used to deliver hot to the switch you are only left with a green or a white. The green is always a ground wire in case a box or appliance becomes energized. So, you have a white wire left, but white is the color designated to Neutral wires and the function of the wire you have is not neutral. It's delivering switched hot current back to a light. Now, the white wire doesn't care if you put a piece of tape on it and will send power to whatever is on the other end of it. But the tradition is to put a piece of black electrical tape on the white wire to designate it as 'switched hot'. Then you wire up the switch and go to the lamp or the junction box and put another piece of black tape on the white wire so you do not foolishly join a white wire that is really a switched hot with other white wires that are definitely neutral wires. The white wire with black tape on it tells you the wire is coming from a switch and is really supposed to be connected with a wire nut to the Black wire going to the lamp or fan. That's the whole goal, controlling power to a fixture...and the switch is opening and closing the circuit...but the colors become extremely important because you could be looking at a junction box with 5 separate Romex trios coming in, all black, white, green...but one of those whites is VERY SPECIAL. it's a white wire that is switched hot coming from a switch and it must find the special Black wire that goes to the lamp or lamps you are controlling with the switch.

Now, you might think I'm explaining this because I accidentally didn't put black tape on the white wire and joined it to all the blacks and thus shorted the whole circuit...but that's not true. I'm just giving a lesson in this little detail that I've figured out. See, I like to know the WHY behind the HOW. And it's easy to say, "apply black tape to the switched hot white wire" but that doesn't fully explain the drama behind that action. The instructions are really assuming you have a white wire because it's assuming you are using modern Romex. But this old asphalt covered wire had no colors so the people needed to make note of which wire was going to the switch and which wire was the switched hot wire coming from the switch and going to the lamp. The important thing to understand is the concept...that the switch does not use a neutral, but it will always need a hot wire and maybe a ground wire. But two wires aren't enough. It needs a third wire to return the switched hot to the lamp and with modern romex that third wire will necessarily be the white wire...which absolutely CAN NOT be connected to other white wires. Why? Because its color is meaningless. The white wire is only white because the Romex roll is mostly for an outlet series. 

I just looked so see if Romex existed with a white and black striped wire exclusively for switch legs. That would be awesome, although tedious. The black and green wires would be the same, but the white wire would have black stripes on it manufactured at the factory. That way, a person would not have to apply tape to the ends...but the other benefit would be in a big system where a person wants to add a branch off a length of wire and simply chooses a romex randomly and cuts it open and uses the white and black and green as though they are neutral, hot and ground, but ACTUALLY, the white wire is a switched hot wire and it's taped properly at both ends, but in the middle of the romex there is no way to put black tape on it, so the person splices into the wire and unknowingly is sending a switched hot directly to the neutral wires that will cause a space time paradox.

Furthermore, i sent power to the switch on a black wire when the accepted method is to use a taped white wire to the switch and then the black back to the light. I reject that approach because it makes no sense visually to change black to taped white arbitrarily in a junction box while it does make sense to change it at the switch. Then I learn NEITHER method is used since of you are running wires to a switch then you should be running 4 wires, white black red and green for future switches that require neutral. Then you dont tape anything and use black to the switch and red from the switch to he light. Jeez. Complicated.  

So, these are all details I've learned about and pondered and not pass on my overwrought thoughts. 

Now, the mistake I made yesterday was after wiring everything at 2AM and the next day I turned the breaker on and the overhead light was always on. The switch did nothing. Why? Well, in my blindness I managed to take the switched hot white wire with black tape on it and pair it to the black wire of the switch leg itself. So, I had removed the switch completely from the equation. I wired the lamp directly to a wire nut that was always hot, and the switch was wired in a loop to itself. perfect.

That was easy to figure out when I looked at the black wire that was joined up with the white wire with black tape on it. It was obviously coming from the same bit of romex in the same knockout on the junction box. So, I had to identify which black wire was the light wire since there were 5 other black wires. This involved taking out pairs of black and white wires and connecting them while I checked for continuity at the lamp socket. When I found the continuity I took that black wire and paired it with the white wire taped black, and I put the neutral wire of the lamp with the other white wires.

I think black wires will always be hot. I'm not aware of a scenario where a black wire will be used and taped white. But white wires are not always neutral...if they are taped black then it's really a switched hot wire intended to control current to a lamp or fan.

The next day I fought with another switch leg and though to myself that I would save time if I used 14/2 Romex intended for light circuits. oh, but I didn't have any white 14/2 romex. All I had was 12/2 romex, so I battled for 2 hours getting the wire through a hole and fed into a wall cavity. A huge pain in the ass, and I wired the switch leg to the switch, taped the white wire with black tape to designate it as SWITCHED HOT...and brought it back to a junction box with wires to an outlet that controls a lamp in a closet, a lamp, another outlet that includes a fan and also the wire that continues on to the single kitchen outlet. I paired the white wire with the black tape to the bathroom light black wire and then connected all the blacks to black and the white wires to white and the grounds to ground.

I turn the breaker on and the closet light is on and the switch controls nothing. The bathroom light doesn't turn on, but the closet outlet that put it exclusively to control a light (actually Christmas light string that illuminates a row of shelves nicely). Fuck. I swore bitterly because it was the second straight day that I had a switch leg that didn't work as I expected. What had I done wrong this time?

I investigate the junction box and discover that I had been thinking of the wiring from the previous year when I wired up the closet outlet to branch directly off the lamp power. I had thought of those two lights as a single light branch for so long that when I wired the bathroom light to the switched hot leg I had really put the closet light together magically with the bathroom light. Because I had thought of them as on the same branch, controlled by the same switch, for a year. And that was true for a year. But when I replaced all the wire last week I had separated those two lights with two separate legs of Romex and all the connections were now to be made in the Junction box. The two lights were not the same branch anymore. So, I had wired the bathroom light to the switched light but had hot wired the closet light directly to permanently hot wire nut. So, it was always on. So, I had to find the wire from the closet light and relocate it to the switched hot/ white wire with black tape wire nut with the bathroom light black wire. I wanted both of those lights to be switched on and off together since the closet gives off light to the bathroom so I want them both on or both off.

I got that all together, chuckling that I had found two ways to mess up, and turned the circuit back on and, holy shit, the closet light now was controlled by the switch but the damn bathroom light still didn't come on. Man, what had I done wrong this time?? Yesterday I hot wired the overhead room light and wired the switch leg to itself. That was a bonehead move although it's about the least harmful way to mess up with a switched hot wire since it is removed from all the circuits. But today I had hot wired the closet light since I forgot it was now a separate circuit, and the bathroom light was not working.

Then I remembered! Fortunately this idea came to me quickly because I would've felt like a total idiot. When I assembled the newly purchased glass globe bath light I decided the globe was safest mounted on the base because it's so fragile it might break in the closet. So, I put it on the base....WITHOUT A BULB.

So, the whole time I was looking at the glass globe to illuminate it actually didn't have a bulb inside. So, I find a bulb and of course it's all wired correctly and it all works now.

So, the only item remaining to be replaced is the kitchen outlet. There is only a single outlet and it powers  the microwave and the refrigerator and the coffee maker and the toaster and a toaster oven. That is too many amps for a 20A circuit so I can only use the microwave if nothing else is on. The toaster oven is probably doomed for the thrift store because it's a hazard. My plan is to add a big oven hood and vent fan over the stove. This probably won't eliminate the heat but it will be nice when I'm cooking to get rid of the smells. Then I can put two outlets on the wall. It's possible I will actually run a completely different circuit to that wall which will be 20A but that almost makes no sense when I consider the only other items on that circuit are three lights and one outlet that I never use. So, two more outlets would still not even be what a normal circuit usually has. It would be a circuit with three lights and three outlets. That's reasonable. If I want a microwave I can use with a toaster oven then yes I need to have two circuits since the Microwave is 12Amps and the toaster oven is around 12 amps. Those have to be on separate circuits if I want to use them at the same time, but really I don't see that happening either. 

I delayed getting involved with the major electrical replacement because I thought the roof was more important, but the roof took forever to get ordered and the heat was extreme this summer and every Monday I would wonder if the world was going to end so what's the point in replacing wire? But the world didn't end, and I finally found a company that would order the metal roof for me so I knew what kind of money I would have left over for replacing the wire. I considered the roof the top priority, and the wiring the second priority. But I managed to spend the spring and summer insulating the living room and installing an air conditioner and replacing all the siding on the house. I think my reasoning was that the living room was so hot that I couldn't stand to sit in it and I couldn't get a company to cooperate to sell me the roof. It was a major effort to order that roof and it will likely be measured all wrong. But Live and Learn. So, I ordered the roof and the weather is nice so I decided I would tackle the exterior wiring, clean that up...and that led to taking some of the ceiling and wall off because I was replacing exterior wire through the wall to a new outlet I added but I couldn't reach the entrance point with the ceiling in the way. The ceiling had been rained on, so it had to be taken out and the wall was moldy so that won't be missed either. Then I decided I should replace the original knob and tube wiring and that involved tearing into the ceiling and wall and making temporary branches to keep power to the refrigerator while I work on one leg or another. And now I have finished everything but the kitchen outlets...which I want to postpone since the ceiling in the kitchen is this awful cellulose ceiling tile that is stable as long as you don't look at it with bad intentions, but as soon as you touch it the stuff explodes into lung disease dust. So, removing that whole ceiling with about 30 tiles requires taping off the doors and covering everything with drop cloth. Then I can take the ceiling off so I can run an outlet circuit down the wall and behind the knotty pine boards. Currently the single kitchen outlet is the original knob and tube wiring that I've tapped into at the end of my bathroom branch line. Since the bathroom has basically one light I see no problem running that circuit into the kitchen, although I already have brand new wire in the kitchen in the overhead light so I will probably continue that leg over the ceiling and down the wall to the vent and the new outlets.

Also, dont use armored cable unless you commit to metal boxes too. Mixing metal clad wires with plastic boxes jeopardizes the armor since there is no easy way to bond it to the box. It might be unlikely that the armor will become energized but it is possible if the armor isnt bonded.

A final note on this topic: this clumsy electrical approach is probably unavoidable on old houses like mine. The power has to be physically traced every inch from the panel to the place you want power. There's no way to make this easy. A person has to physically handle wire up in a small area above the ceiling and below the roof, pull the wire to junction boxes and then down the wall. It's unavoidable, but tedious, and has me thinking that the future houses can't be this clumsy. I'm sure the electrical will be integrated into the construction of the house with a modular channels. Maybe the channels will be rigid like pipe but carry current. I don't know what the solution will be but it will be better than strands of Romex running like noodles in the attic or the ceiling. The second innovation I have is to make exclusive switch leg romex that has the white wire striped black so that it will never be mistaken for a neutral. I don't see it as an additional expense in the manufacturing process, just include a black stripe in the process that covers the wire in white coating.