Could this have ever worked.

N

nizak

Senior Member
Had a customer call me saying he removed a working 120V light fixture and installed a new fixture that then would not work.

I get there and find a pair of 3 way switches that are properly wired that controlled the original light.

Upon pulling the switches I find that the 14/2 that is what I’ll call the switch leg from the one 3 way has the neutral cut . There isn’t even a trace of the conductor beyond the sheath.

The original working light was a 40 year old surface mount T-12 fixture.

He shows me a picture of the fixture before he removed it. B-B W-W EG to the case of the fixture.

Says he’s been in the house almost 40 years and the only thing he can ever recall doing is changing the T-12 tube.

How could it have ever worked?

Open splice in the wall picking up a neutral??

He said he could physically trace the wire from the light all the way back to where it went down the wall 5’ above the switch box it terminated in.

See no reason whatsoever for him to lie about it.
 
BarryO said:
Maybe instead of 14/3 between the two switches, two lengths of 14/2 were used, with the white conductor in one unused.
Click to expand...
Yep, sounds like maybe a “California 3-way” but using two 14-2s instead of a 14-3 between the switches, then clipping the extra white conductor so as to not cause confusion. We did that in the 70s, not because it was cheaper or anything, just because we almost never had 14-3 on the truck, so it was faster than driving to the supply house.
 
Deltaforce said:
Neutral source connection no available?
Click to expand...

The original post describes a 14/2 cable from the final switch to the light fixture. In US parlance, a cable is described by the number of circuit conductors and additionally has a equipment grounding conductor. So that 14/2 cable should have 3 wires in it, a black insulated circuit conductor, a white insulated circuit conductor and a bare or green insulated equipment grounding conductor.

The white wire was cut at the switch box end, so there was no proper connection to the source neutral.

My best guess agrees with @synchro : at the fixture end the EGC was used as the circuit current path in place of the proper neutral wire.
 
winnie said:
The original post describes a 14/2 cable from the final switch to the light fixture. In US parlance, a cable is described by the number of circuit conductors and additionally has a equipment grounding conductor. So that 14/2 cable should have 3 wires in it, a black insulated circuit conductor, a white insulated circuit conductor and a bare or green insulated equipment grounding conductor.

The white wire was cut at the switch box end, so there was no proper connection to the source neutral.

My best guess agrees with @synchro : at the fixture end the EGC was used as the circuit current path in place of the proper neutral wire.
Click to expand...
Equipment ground conductor in the 14/2 cable leading to the fixture was not attached to anything in the switch box.

Not even to the device.
 
nizak said:
Equipment ground conductor in the 14/2 cable leading to the fixture was not attached to anything in the switch box.

Not even to the device.
Click to expand...

We were going by the following sentence from your initial posr:

"He shows me a picture of the fixture before he removed it. B-B W-W EG to the case of the fixture."
 
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