Hello,

First, thanks to everyone who helped with my arc/short question. I have
a pretty good idea of what happen now, but still am going to have an
electrician come out next week and will post the conclusion.

New question. I had a switch that controlled power to a receptacle, so
a lamp or something could be plugged into it and controlled by the
switch.

One of the walls in the room was opened and the guys created a fixture
for a ceiling fan based off the switch that once controlled the wall
receptacle.

My question is the switch that controls the power to the ceiling
fixture has a white and a black wire running to it (I think that's ok,
right?), but does that explain why there is power always to the ceiling
fixture?

If the switch is off and I take a neon-tester to the black and white
wires the light barely goes on. If I turn the switch on and touch the
wires, the light on the tester lights up very bright (as if I stuck
both probes into a hot receptacle).

Does this sound OK?

You really need to get a real tester. With the switch off, the hot should be
dead



"Native" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hello,

First, thanks to everyone who helped with my arc/short question. I have
a pretty good idea of what happen now, but still am going to have an
electrician come out next week and will post the conclusion.

New question. I had a switch that controlled power to a receptacle, so
a lamp or something could be plugged into it and controlled by the
switch.

One of the walls in the room was opened and the guys created a fixture
for a ceiling fan based off the switch that once controlled the wall
receptacle.

My question is the switch that controls the power to the ceiling
fixture has a white and a black wire running to it (I think that's ok,
right?), but does that explain why there is power always to the ceiling
fixture?

If the switch is off and I take a neon-tester to the black and white
wires the light barely goes on. If I turn the switch on and touch the
wires, the light on the tester lights up very bright (as if I stuck
both probes into a hot receptacle).

Does this sound OK?

You really need to get a real tester. With the switch off, the hot should be dead.

What is a real tester? I did go buy a little pen like device that beeps
when it is near voltage. It beeps near the ceiling fixture with the
switch on or off.

You'd be better off with a light bulb in a pigtail socket or anything that
can assure that you do or don't have 120 volts to neutral and to ground



"Native" wrote in message
ups.com...
You really need to get a real tester. With the switch off, the hot
should be dead.

What is a real tester? I did go buy a little pen like device that beeps
when it is near voltage. It beeps near the ceiling fixture with the
switch on or off.

RBM (remove this) wrote:
You'd be better off with a light bulb in a pigtail socket or anything that
can assure that you do or don't have 120 volts to neutral and to ground



"Native" wrote in message
ups.com...
You really need to get a real tester. With the switch off, the hot
should be dead.

What is a real tester? I did go buy a little pen like device that beeps
when it is near voltage. It beeps near the ceiling fixture with the
switch on or off.



I think the best advice is, if you have to ask these kinds of
questions, you should call an electrician, or at least a friend who
knows what he's doing. If you screw up, someone can get killed or the
house can burn down.

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You need to invest in a tester. Not a tester that works of inductance
like the pen testers. Even the neon testers are not reliable. We will
not let out employees use them as they are fallible.

Buy a wiggy
http://www.squared.com/us/products/machine_safety.nsf/unid/58870E11543C976885256D500050927B/$file/wiggy.htm

Or some sort of voltage tester that tests ac and dc. Some are fairly
inexpensive.

You are checking LIGHTS on testers and you need to be checking voltage

If you are using a neon tester and you go between the wires when the
switch is off and you get a small glow that could be a small amount of
voltage on it from inductance or a loaded neutral down the line and
your neon tester is seeing it.
If you get your voltmeter I would expect you may have a couple volts
between ground and neutral at the point you tested and got a small
glow.

A wiggy has coil in it it will click to the volatage applied to it.
Voltmeter is better but you need to read the manual to learn all the
settings

Tazz





On 24 Dec 2006 12:43:22 -0800, "Native"
wrote:

Hello,

First, thanks to everyone who helped with my arc/short question. I have
a pretty good idea of what happen now, but still am going to have an
electrician come out next week and will post the conclusion.

New question. I had a switch that controlled power to a receptacle, so
a lamp or something could be plugged into it and controlled by the
switch.

One of the walls in the room was opened and the guys created a fixture
for a ceiling fan based off the switch that once controlled the wall
receptacle.

My question is the switch that controls the power to the ceiling
fixture has a white and a black wire running to it (I think that's ok,
right?), but does that explain why there is power always to the ceiling
fixture?

If the switch is off and I take a neon-tester to the black and white
wires the light barely goes on. If I turn the switch on and touch the
wires, the light on the tester lights up very bright (as if I stuck
both probes into a hot receptacle).

Does this sound OK?

Thanks for everyone's help. Had an electrician come out and diagnosed
what was going on. The switch was wired fine, I think he called it back
loading?, but the issue was one of the junction boxes where all the
wires came together. The people who had done the work originally had
mixed up a few wires, his technical term was "it's a mess", but he got
everything working great. If I recall correctly now, there was a
nuetral connected to the ground wire and that is what caused power even
with the switch off.

Also, at the end of the day, he recommended I get a digital tester,
which was wonderful b/c his reco helped side step the fight with my
wife when I told her how much it was!

Thanks again for everyone's help.