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house built in 1967, I have pretty extensive experience with working on the electrical of this house and others in my life, but I am not a pro or electrician.
I have redone all of the lights and switches in my house and hung many lights at the whim of my lovely wife. I’ve done pretty extensive troubleshooting, testing the wires hot to ground gets me 120V and neutral to ground is 86-88 roughly (which means there’s a phantom/short?). This is when I have it wired what I think is correctly. When it was wired before, the hot black from one of the older wires was connected to the white of the other older wires. And then the other black and white we’re connected to the ceiling light. That configuration does not work anymore and I have tried a number of other configurations with no solution. Most configs, including all Hot’s together, all neutrals together etc will not work. I would have to cut my walls open to get to anything for the switch, so I would love to avoid that if possible but I’ll do what it takes to be safe and make it work

Edit:

Thanks everyone, this is wired as a single pole end of run switch loop. I’ve got the white to/from switch recoded as hot, on the hot side of my switch, that’s connected to the black hot (red electrical tape) coming from the line. I checked the switch wire when disconnected for continuity and it’s fine. When I wire it all up to the light, and hit the switch the AC voltage detector goes off all along the pendant and up to the bulb.

I checked the socket with my multimeter, with a bulb in, black hot to ground is 121 steady, white neutral to to ground started near 90 but drops down to 70 or less, constantly dropping but nothing below 60. Attempting black hot to white neutral does nothing, even continuity tested doesn’t activate when testing black to white at the socket. Black to ground and white to ground both activate continuity tester but it sounds quieter than usual.

No matter what I do, none of the bulbs light up. Any ideas?

I even disconnected the switch and tried wiring the fixture directly but it’s the same thing, same values

pics: imgur.com/gallery/3R11L4I

Kyle Shepherd
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  • In standard US wiring (implied by 120V), you should almost always have nearly 0V between neutral and ground. Since you have good 120V to neutral, it sounds like something is wrong with your ground. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact May 04 '22 at 22:03
  • Rereading...120V hot to ground, 86V neutral to ground...implies bad neutral. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact May 04 '22 at 22:13
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    Hot black to a white... sounds like a switch loop. Include pictures of your ceiling box and switch box. Can you return it to the original configuration? Did you take pictures before changing anything? – JACK May 04 '22 at 22:32
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    "That configuration does not work anymore" implies that you have not actually returned it correctly to that configuration. That's a very standard US-type switch loop from anytime before NEC2011 (so, hasn't even been made obsolete in a few of the more "slow to adopt" jurisdictions.) Seems unlikely that you never would have run into one in a 1960's house, as they were very common, and don't have to be updated unless you are remodeling. – Ecnerwal May 04 '22 at 23:29
  • See https://diy.stackexchange.com/q/67012/18078 – Ecnerwal May 04 '22 at 23:42
  • Depending on what you did when you "wired what I think is correctly" you might have fried the switch or connections, since you don't mention the usual problem of folks who "correct" switch loops rather than stopping for a bit of research, which is tripping the breaker when they throw the switch. If you did the usual Black is hot, White is neutral to the switch and it didn't blow the fuse/breaker, something else did, like a backstab connection. But you might have mis-wired it some other way. Hard to tell without details. – Ecnerwal May 05 '22 at 02:20
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    the wiring may be correct, but inoperative. Backstabs are a frequent culprit here. – Harper - Reinstate Monica May 05 '22 at 03:27
  • Thanks everyone, this is wired as a single pole end of run switch loop. I’ve got the white recoded as hot, on the hot side of my switch, that’s connected to the black hot coming from the line. I checked the switch wire for continuity and it’s fine. When I wire it all up to the light, and hit the switch the AC voltage detector goes off all along the pendant and up to the bulb. But none of the bulbs light up pics: https://imgur.com/gallery/3R11L4I – Kyle Shepherd May 14 '22 at 19:37
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    It would help if you clean up the question a little to clearly focus on the pertinent information about the wiring and the light. Try CLEARLY triaging both the fixture and your wiring: 1) Remove the light fixture from the ceiling, put a plug on the end of it and plug it into a wall. If the lamp is good, 2) Buy a $3 "pigtail light socket" and attach it to the ceiling instead of your lamp. Use one known good bulb. 3) Attach the same pigtail bulb to the know hot/neutral leads, whether they are in the ceiling (switch loop) or at the switch. These three steps should narrow things down. – jay613 May 15 '22 at 17:38

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