mm wrote:

On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 17:10:18 GMT, John wrote:

wrote:
"Not knowing anything about electricity I *assumed* that one of the
switches
had to be defective so I replaced both on/off switches -- that didn't
solve
the problem. "

Are you an auto mechanic by trade? From your above decribed behavior,
I'd say so.

Auto mechanic? Bummer. No, a software engineer.

That might be part of the problem too. That's what I do for a living,
and since I have a test environment that I can restore, I can make any
mistake without too much trouble. Remember that your house is the
production system.

Have you checked to see if any of your breakers have tripped? Include
any GFCI's in the house as well. You never know how many stupid things
someone before you may have done so, putting an inside light fixture on
a circuit after a bathroom or garage GFCI is certainly possible.

I first checked all the breakers and GFCIs. They're fine. When I turn a
breaker on/off, it affects all the other lights in the box. Curiously, the
switches are on two different breakers.

It's more than curious. No one would install one light controlled by
two swtiches with each swtich on a different breaker.

Did this used to work? How did it work: could you turn the light
both on AND OFF from two different swtiches, no matter how the other
switch was set.? If that is the case, I don't see how two breakers
could be involved.

How many lights are "in the box"? How many switches?

Before starting to replace the second
light switch, I was fortunate to accidentally flip another switch in the box
and to my shock, the light turned on.

So 3 different swtiches control this light? And 2 of them are in one
location? If they are in 3 locations, maybe you have a four way
switch. If I misunderstand, you probably don't.

You definitely have to read that website until you understand all of
it. If it is really confusing (I haven't checked) you might get a
book from the library, which might say the same thing in a different
way,

I found the other breaker and turned
it off.

How do I use the tester to verify that there's power coming into the light
switches? If it was a single switch, I wouldn't be asking such a lame question.


Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.


Two switches at either end of the hall turn the light on/off.

The power tester is working -- I plugged into a known live circuit and it glowed.

There's another 3 way switch in the same box which I used to see how the
power tester worked. To my surprise, it glowed when I turned the power to
the light off.

There are several other light switches in each box. All unrelated to the
hallway light. None of the other lights have any problems.

The hallway light was working fine up until the other day. There's no one
else in the house who might have touched something.

One switch confuses me: There are two (2) red wires on one side. This
doesn't match with anything in:
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/courses...ariations.html

Another switch in the box have two (2) feeds, both black.