what did i do to my lights?

Question

alright, so today was feeling like a handy man, but ill keep it short. my mom wanted me to replace the dining room light fixture on the ceiling, so i turned on the light and went pulling and replacing fuses till I found the right one. once i did that, i took down the fixture and my mom said to hold off and wait because she changed her mind about using the fixture she got and was going to get another one tomorrow. so i taped off each wire and put a wire nut on each seperately. she asked if i would do the same for the light above the sink, and that circuit was already off too, i figured it was the same fuse then. so i took it down and taped the wires. i replaced the fuse and the circuit for the light above the sink wasnt back on because its connected to an ground fault outlet too and the light wasnt on. i fooled around with a couple fuses and that came on. NOW, the 2 spotlights above the kitchen bar and light above the stove(fan) dont turn on. what are my possibilities here? im not sure what im missing. my fuses may not be labeled correctly since it was my dad who labeled them(the prior owner was chinese and the fuses were labeled in chinese) but he labeled one as stove fan/light. when i pull this, the outlet goes off and so do the other 3 spotlights in the kitchen. now what am i looking at here? i really dont know what it could be...could it be by removing the lights the circuit for the 2 lights and stove light arent closed anymore? i dont see how this could be though since both the sink light and dining room light were on switches, and when turned off the other lights didnt have issues. any help appreciated!

Answer 1

sounds like you got some lights in series - when you turn on one light more than one light turns on.

or it could be that the ground or return is shared by more than one light.

Try re-installing the fixtures and see what happens. That would be the easiest.

Safety first... be sure the power is off.


Good Luck!

Answer 2

One thing is ... you didn' have to pull any fuses or flip any circuit breakers .... as long as the lights were turned off ... you had no power to the fixture. You could have just taped the switch to make sure no one turned it on.....


You may just have the wrong fuse ..... keep trying ... making sure the fuses are good. Hopefully .... those lines werent wired from the ground fault .. in that case the ground fault may be tripped and its shutting that other string down. Try putting everything back ... make sure the ground fault isnt tripped .... and ... just turn off the light fixtures you want to work on ...

Answer 3

I had the same experience. All my lights were wired in a bizarre series so I dismantled the kitchen light then realised that I had no lights on the ground floor.

The house in question was built in the early 80s and the electrician who I called out in the end said that this was a safe but annoying technique used then.

I have to point out as well that I refitted the kitchen light before I called out the electrician and ended up blowing the fuse.

I would recommend that you call a qualified electrician out. They will probably sort you out in about 30 minutes.

Answer 4

When you discinnected the fixtures, were there more than two wires in some of the wire nuts? My bet is yes. It sounds like you have opened up the feed.

In boxes where you removed fixtures, when you finished your work, any wire nuts that had more than two wires when you started should have been re-coonectd less the wire from the fixture that you removed.

What I mean is, if there were three black wires in the nut, and you removed the black wire for the fixture, you shouold have reconnected the two remaining wires to provide continuity for power through to the next point.

Same for the white wires.

Make sense?