You cannot. Unfortunately, if your house has no ground then it’s not up to code. Real problem is that’s unsafe and you have to be really careful so that power carrying wires do not touch metal boxes.
You cannot assume. You have to know. Ron asked a followup question and said there is no grounding wire.
You lose this bet. Plenty of houses with ungrounded electrical system or fake grounded outlets (3-prong outlets with no grounding wire, but ground connector connected to neutral)
However, this is my last comment to you as I do not want to go into a pissing contest.
2 Likes
Ok, so while you two kids are fighting . . .
Is anyone troubled by the fact that a white comes out of one top feed and goes into another top feed without being tied with a wire nut, as if it’s one conductor? Conduit??
Also, how about the bottom feed with a black and a red with no white?
OP, are you in the US? Is there conduit attached to that box?
1 Like
Based on everything I’ve learned about light switches, I thought that was weird too. Yes, I am in the US. But, the apartment is old and, based upon what goes off when I hit the circuit breakers, the wiring is all over the place. Because I successfully installed a remote unit in my ceiling fan, I thought this would be a piece of cake.
As I mentioned earlier, I am going to take the advice of the experts here and hire a licensed electrician if I decide to proceed with this.
1 Like
If there is conduit back there, then that would not be all that unusual. That may be the case as there are no grounds in the box. With conduit, the box and the conduit is the ground. Switches are grounded by their connection to the box.
To me, it looks like the switch on the left has power coming in to the box via a black and white and leaving switched via a black and white. (With the white being a continuous wire.)
My guess is that the white is the neutral. I’d cut and strip it for testing so you’re not just testing with a contact sensor. When you are done, wire nut the two pieces back together. When add the smart switch, add a pigtail to that.
The switch on the right is probably hot coming in on the black and going out switched on the red. Presumably, the neutral is at the device.
2 Likes
As well intentioned as everyone has been on this thread, you are doing the right thing. As @tgauchat correctly pointed out, you don’t want to risk fire or electrocution. Good choice!
2 Likes
This is how my electrical boxes work, at least according to someone who I believe knows what they’re doing. I’m not an electrical expert, but I took physics 101 and I think it makes sense.
If the box itself is grounded, then it should be posssible to check that with a multimeter, I think.
I agree that one should never assume when dealing with home wiring.
1 Like
To the OP - are you in the Chicago area?
Conduit required in and around there.
No, I am in the Los Angeles area.
I intend to have an electrician determine if the white wire is the neutral wire, and if it is not, to run a neutral wire. But I have one last question: I am installing a 2 gang smart switch. One side will control the light, the other will control the ceiling heater. Right now, if that white wire is the neutral wire, it is coming from the light. Will the smart switch also require a neutral wire coming from the fan?
I am from the UK so US wiring is unfamiliar to me BUT… please seek professional advice…
Differentiating between an Earth wire and a Neutral wire is really difficult and both get abused, usually unintentionally, especially by people who require a Neutral and end up using Earth. Misidentifying a ‘floating’ wire is prone to happen too without experience.
Neutral and Earth are not the same. Earth is ‘protection’ so that any exposed metal parts can’t shock you and be dangerous. Instead a fuse is blown. Neutral is the return path for the current flowing out through the Live. They form a loop. Earth should NOT have any current flowing whereas Neutrals will. If Earth has current flowing there is a fault.
There are devices called Earth leakage circuit breakers that are often employed nowadays that break supply if there is current sensed in the Earth wiring or in another variant if the outgoing Live current doesn’t exactly balance the returned Neutral current then they can automatically interrupt/break specific circuits.
In your case because that white wire isn’t terminated onto and attached onto the metal backbox I’m guessing it isn’t an Earth wire. So I think you may be in luck that it’s a Neutral. But it could be a Live with the switching taking place in the Neutral return. (Bad practice as Live shocks , Neutral doesn’t.)
In the UK we tend to save wiring cost by running Neutrals direct to devices and only feeding the switched Lives back through the switches… which means we often don’t have Neutral available in our switches.
P.S. Live / Neutral / Earth capitalisation only for clarity… before the grammar police pounce …
2 Likes
1 Like
ELCB in the UK … wow that’s quite different … can’t put that down to the accent.
So you use Ground in home mains wiring too where we use Earth…(if that helps in understading my previous post).
We use Ground in most electronic and electrical circuitry too but curiously not for home mains wiring.
2 Likes
Your Neutral needs to be on the same circuit as the device you are controlling. However, if both the heater and the light are fed from the same HOT then they should be wired to the same Neutral as well. Otherwise your have an even bigger mess on your hands.
1 Like
@xAPPO
Our ground and your earth is the same. Our neutral is different, as we use 120V AC single phase throughout the house while you use 220V AC two phase and no neutral, but you use earth for safety. In our case, earth (ground) serves two purposes. One, as safety and two, if neutral somehow breaks you still have a current path to close the circuit but this will trip the breaker.
1 Like
If they are on the same circuit, no. You would add two pigtails, one for each. If they are on different circuits, then yes, you need a neutral from that circuit.
OK, the logic I would use for “circuit” (to paraphrase Dr. McCoy:“I’m a programmer, not an electrician”) is what goes off when you pull down the circuit breaker. Unfortunately for me, The light goes off on one circuit break, and the heater on another. So, it sounds like if the existing white is a neutral, my best case scenario is to have electrician install neutral for heater – then I’m good to go!!! Right?
Circuit does equate to a breaker, yes.
I would talk to your electrician about that. I’ve been told that the neutral should be from the same circuit but I can’t tell you the reasoning behind that. All neutrals go back to the breaker box and they are connected to one of two bus bars (i.e. phases). So theoretically if the two circuits are on the same phase (i.e. connected to the same bus bar), maybe that neutral is ok.
Perhaps someone here can elaborate. I just don’t know the answer, so double-check with your electrician.
If you have two circuits sharing a neutral you would end up with a possible combination of the two amerages running through the single neutral. So, if you had two 15 amp circuits, that would mean potentially 30 AMP running through the neutral and that’s over the wire’s rating.
It’s also an electrocution hazard. That’s why in the one case that it’s allowed, 220v circuits in the US, they use a “double breaker” that is tied together so they are always on together or off together. Think of this, you turn the breaker off for the heater but not the light. Well, there still a potential for current to be flowing through the neutral from the other circuit. And that would be a bit of a zap.
On the up side, the neutral for the heater circuit is not very far. It’s just up at the heater. So, what is coming into the box is most likely a Neutral for the light circuit and the Hot and Load for the lights. Then you have the hot and load for the heater. The Neutral for the heater circuit is at the heater. So the electrician would just have to run a neutral from the heater to the switchbox.
Also, you’ll want to keep the circuits separate from each other. You wouldn’t want to tie the neutrals all together. Gotta keep em separate.
