After a year or two when the extension cord insulation dries out from
outdoor exposure and moisture gets in there, a lack of a grounding conductor
will be the least of your worries. Water is a conductor and will cause a
high resistive short that will not trip your circuit breaker, but will burn
everything in contact with the wires. Since the wires are high above the
driveway and are in the wall, they will continue to burn for a long time.
By the time you notice you may have some serious fire damage.

As an example, last year I got an emergency call on a Saturday night from
the maintenance man at a condo development that I service. Some of the
street lights were not working and the circuit breaker would not reset.
Sunday morning I went over and started checking all of the poles. One
"Pole" was brand new and was nothing more than a 16' 6"x6" pressure treated
log that their maintenance company put in to replace a pole that someone
knocked over with a car. The work was not done by an electrician, but by a
bunch of laborers. They routed out a groove in the side of the pole and
installed 2 pieces of indoor romex spliced together without a box in the
groove and covered it with molding.

When I disconnected that new pole from the circuit I was able to reset the
circuit breaker and get the other street lights working. I then pulled off
that molding covering the spliced romex and there was a big black burn mark
in the center of the pole surrounding the open spliced romex. Water had
gotten into the splices and made a continuous short until the heat caused
the insulation to melt away and shorted the copper wires together which
caused the circuit breaker to trip. The pole had only been in the ground a
few weeks.

The same thing could happen to your house. Call an electrician and have
that security light installed properly. That extension cord is not rated to
be permanently installed and should NOT be run through walls.


John Grabowski
http://www.mrelectrician.tv



wrote in message
oups.com...
My wife bought a "security light" at Costco, to be installed above the
garage door, below the eve of the roof. It's a basic model, with two
bulbs, probably no more than $50. The unit looks identical to what is
shown at the following URL (no ads or popups, or dancing monkeys, so
feel free to click.)

http://www.cornerhardware.com/howto/ht015.html

We did not previously have an exterior light above the garage door, so
there was no electrical outlet. Inside the garage, there was an
available outlet, about 5 feet away from the door. So, I bought a cheap
extension cord, plugged the pronged end in the outlet. I put the
extension cord through the hole, cut and threw away the end of the
cord, and attached the the hot and neutral wires to the corresponding
wires on the security light. It works, but I have two questions /
concerns:

Q1. I was able to run only 2 wires from the outlet, so there is no
grounding wire running from outlet to the "circular plate covering the
hole in the wall", as shown in the picture at the URL listed above.

Is this a complete no-no? As I asking for trouble? Or is it OK? I have
some small appliances (desk fan, table lamp, etc.) that use cords with
only two wire -- no grounding wire.

Also, the extension cord from outlet to the security light is only 5
feet, well insulated, and the security light is mounted well above the
ground. There are no metal parts near it (garage door is an ancient, 30
year old, single panel, wood door).

Q2. When security light is activated, it suffers from flickering IF the
garage door is fully open. If the garage door is closed at least 20% or
so, i.e., the door panel is angled at least 20 to 30 degrees, the
flickering stops (0 degree means fully open; 90 degrees mans fully
closed)

This is again due to reflection from the garage door (painted white). I
treat this flickering as a feature (reminding us to close the garage
door), but my father thinks of this as a bug. Any suggestions to avoid
flickering? (Sort of upgrading garage door to a new, sectional kind).

Thanks a lot.

Bhoot Nath