Blew the garage breaker...help.

[HOWDY69]

I am adding some lights in the garage coming off an existing light. The circuit has two switches. I turned the light off and taped both switches so there would be no current to the existing light and no one would turn the light on while I was working. The existing light was wired with 2/12 plus ground using white and black. The green was not used and was cut off short up inside the romex. I had plenty of length to work with and wanted to start with fresh wire so I took out my side cutters to cut the romex flush. When I squeezed the cutters the circuit blew. How is this possible? Is the green hot?

[HOWDY69]

I have been quite stupid

The switch only opens one side of the circuit and I connected the other side to ground with the cutters.

[averagef250]

Sounds like you're practicing some very unsafe wiring habits. Please use those ground wires!

Sounds to me like what you have going on is whoever wired your lights to begin with put the switch in the earth pole of your wires. Basically, you'll have 120 power at the lights all the time and your switch is switching the light to ground. Not safe at all. Lucky nobody got fried changing a bulb.

Rewire this stuff so the hot wire is switched and ground everything at every wiring junction.

This is of coarse assuming your dealing with 120 single phase. If you're working with 220 split phase then you should run a mechanical or magnetic contactor to cut both legs simultaneously.

I'm no electrician, but I've had to learn a lot about this stuff through necessity and screw ups. Some of my shop wiring looks like it would make for a great scene in a new final destination movie, but I used common sense, used what I had and definitely erred on the side of caution with grounds. Trust me, electrical parts do fail, they do catch fire and for no apparent reason and you'll be lucky if your there to catch it when it does. Proper grounding may not save your place from burning to the ground from sloppy wiring or bad parts, but it might save your life when your trying to kill the power and put the fire out.

[HOWDY69]

I have now cut the power at the breaker box like I should have done to begin with. I also connected the ground which the PO had not done.

[bugser]

Was that as exciting as I imagine it was?

[HOWDY69]

It was a bit too exciting and put a divot in my good side cutters.

I tell you I have been putting a higher emphasis on safety and was wearing safety glasses. I also managed to break a porcelain light socket by overtightening a screw and while the piece that broke off did not hit me I was glad I was wearing safety glasses. When I blew the breaker I was also standing on my new fiberglass ladder. My old wooden ladder was great for developing my sea legs but not very safe.

[Finleyphoto]

Shazam!


Dennis

[bugser]

Hello,my name is......and I have a problem that my wife yells at me about every time.

When changing an outlet or switch,I don't turn off the breaker. I'm a bad boy.

[Tim P.]

it either glows or blows good thought for the day