Ivan Vegvary wrote:
Up in the attic. Have to bring hot wire to junction box with three
legs going out. Each leg goes to ceiling light of different rooms.
YES, I can power them up and the wall switch in each room turns on
its respective light. BUT, what's an easy way to test that I don't
have hot and neutral reversed. The old romex in the attic (two
wire, cloth wrapped) is NOT color coded in any way.

Do I simply drag a neutral wire from a different circuit and probe
the bulb socket in each room? Is there an easier way? My A.C.
voltmeter obviously does not indicate polarity.

All replies appreciated. Sheetrock guy is coming tomorrow a.m. and I
have to solve this today!

Ivan Vegvary

better, drag a wire from a good ground (water pipe) and check voltage
against that. Heck, if you're in the attic, why not just add
supplemental grounds and/or pull new romex to replace the old cloth
NM? If you can't pull the whole circuit, do what you can and then
wire a supplemental ground from where you started repulling. Best
would be to take it back to the breaker box but if you can't do that
any ground point is acceptable per code (unless they've changed it
recently.) Only thing that *wouldn't* be acceptable would be to
repull some of a circuit so it would appear to be grounded but to not
actually connect the ground wire to a real ground.

nate

Well, some local codes have problems with things like that, but ... when
it's that old you aren't likely to get much objection to improving the
safety of the ckt if that's all you can afford or manage. I've even
seen some knob & tube with earth grounds.


That's a good point; if the insulation is that old, beware the
insulation falling apart in your hands and possibly already being
missing from some parts of the wires. Especially if there have been any
varmints running around there.