New Dimmer & Outlet Powerless
I need some DIY help. I just installed 4 Lutron Vierti Dimmers in a c.1939 coop apartment. The electrical in the apartment has been partially upgraded in the recent past with some additional 3-prong outlets and gfi’s in half the rooms but there’s no ground and minimum outlets in the other half. 2 of the…
I need some DIY help. I just installed 4 Lutron Vierti Dimmers in a c.1939 coop apartment. The electrical in the apartment has been partially upgraded in the recent past with some additional 3-prong outlets and gfi’s in half the rooms but there’s no ground and minimum outlets in the other half. 2 of the dimmers work fine but two have resulted in outlets receiving no power. The two dimmers in question have a dual outlet directly below the switches. After I installed the dimmers, the qoutlets no longer received power. One dimmer replaced a single pole switch and the second replaced a single pole standard Lutron dimmer. The original switch and dimmer with their associated outlets below worked fine before I installed the new Lutron electronic dimmers. The box: inside the sitch box are 4 wires. I’ll call them A,B,C,and D and they all look alike with dark/dirty woven insulation over solid copper wire. A and B are coming from the top of the box while C and D from the bottom. A is spliced to C back away from the end and taped over. C is then pigtailed to the new dimmer. D is pigtailed to the dimmer while B is not attached to anything and loose with exposed stripped end. I have since capped the exposed end. Particularly with the dimmer-dimmer replacement, I am pretty sure that I re-attached all wires and the loose wire was already like that. I could be wrong. In any even, the old dimmer and outlet worked fine before and now the new dimmer works fine but the oulet below doesn’t anymore. Anyone run into this before or have a guess?
eman,
Thanks again for the info. You hit the nail on the head with the makeshift neutral. I hooked the loose wire onto the switch box and everything works as it did before.
I actually posted for help on two other national forums and no one else picked up on the critical info that there was a loose wire in the box.
i agree with eman1234, you really need to totally re – wire this, i run into crazy stuff like that all the time. one has to have a lot of respect for electricity.
thx, eric.
thats how a bronx neutral works …think about it…in the top wire you have hot and return..in the low end you have hot and ..where is the neutral?ther should have been a run of 12-3 from the fixture to the switch
hmmm…
You’re suggesting that I must have pulled the “bronx neutral” loose off of the switch box thus messing up the previous dimmer-light-outlet wiring? Maybe I’ll take the loose wire and attach it again onto the box and see if the outlet works along with the dimmer-light.
At this point I’m going to re-install a typical flip switch to see if it works again.
thanks again
they were cheating the neutral on the outlet by grounding the bare wire on the switch box, effectively using the casing on the bx as a neutral…it works but it is a really bad idea… just goes to show ..there have always been bad contractors…lol
Thanks Eman. What puzzles me is why would the 2 old light switch setups (with the slide dimmer and the switch) work and now neither outlet works with the new electronic dimmers. I shouldn’t have changed the status quo of outlet power by replacing a slide dimmer and a standard switch with electronic dimmers.
that should have read “since there was no neutral available”
oh yeah. In case of the old dimmer being replaced with the new dimmer, I tried to pigtail the loose wire B together to wire D and the dimmer. When I turned on the power, the outlet worked but only when the dimmer/lights were off. When I turned the light on, the outlet would loose power and there would be a humming/buzzing noise. The noise may have been from the PC speakers or TV I had on the outlet.
it sounds like the wires going down are the power to the outlet and and the exposed wire was probably a “bronx neutral”…grounded to the box since there was neutral available..a totally illegal and dangerous move, but not uncommon… test the outlet for power against a ground and you can see if im right…time for busting up walls and rewiring if you want to do this right..