Kind of odd

E

Eddie702

Licensed Electrician
Location
Western Massachusetts
Occupation
Electrician
I found a light wired this way. Whoever wired this could have used 3 wire cable between the basement and the attic. I guess there is nothing wrong with doing this but it's bugging me for some reason
 

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Eddie702 said:
I found a light wired this way. Whoever wired this could have used 3 wire cable between the basement and the attic. I guess there is nothing wrong with doing this but it's bugging me for some reason
Click to expand...
Did you draw the diagram with an Etch-A-Sketch?:)
Hard to tell what's going on in the junction boxes. It would have been good to add some colored in circles to represent wire nuts & splices. Some wires look like they just run through the JB and not spliced.
 
It bugs you because IMHO it is a violation. You have a neutral that isn't run with its circuit conductors and therefore unbalanced current in the cables.

Probably not a big deal in this case, the main load current is on a proper switch loop, the only unbalanced neutral current is powering the occupancy sensor.

If the 2 two wire cables are NM and run side by side, they can be treated electrically as a single cable.
 
I agree with Jon. It could be corrected by feeding the "hot" of the the occupancy sensor directly from the basement box, and having the upper cable be a switched hot and a neutral that goes just to the light only (not connected to the neutral of other cable).
 
Little Bill said:
Did you draw the diagram with an Etch-A-Sketch?:)
Hard to tell what's going on in the junction boxes. It would have been good to add some colored in circles to represent wire nuts & splices. Some wires look like they just run through the JB and not spliced.
Click to expand...
Microsoft Visio so after I draw it I can save it in Visio or in a PDF
 
God forsaken Visio. I despise that wanna be software. Anywho...... how long did it take you to map all those wires out and figure they were wired like that?
 
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