You are not my electrician, but can you help me change this outlet?
January 31, 2015 6:36 PM   Subscribe

I changed an electrical receptacle, and now my 3-way light switch won't actually turn off the lights. They stay permanently on. Seems the lights were jumped into the electrical outlet, and I created some kind of short circuit so that the lights bypass the light switch and won't turn off.

This receptacle had 4 load wires, 3 neutral wires and a ground wire going into it. The wires were plugged into holes in the back of the outlet, but my new outlet only had 4 holes, so I plugged 1 wire into each hole and then used the screws to attach the other neutral and the 2 other load wires.

Through trial and error, I was able to remove 1 load wire, and now the lights are off at least, but that is a short-term solution. I know an electrician could fix it, and that would be smart given that this was probably not set up right to begin with, but it was at least working before, so it should be possible to get it back to that state.

Does it matter if the load wires are at the top or bottom of the receptacle. Does one of the neutrals need to be exactly opposite the load wire for the lights? What are the steps to troubleshooting/fixing something like this?
posted by willnot to Home & Garden (3 answers total)
 
Best answer: Is it possible the receptcle was set up as having one of the outlets be switch-controlled on your 3-way switch and the other on all the time?

If so, There is a little bar that you will have to snap out near the screw terminals on the receptacle to separate the outlets. You will also have to figure out which wires are which.

The screw terminals on the receptacle are color-coded. If you're in the US, the white wire goes on the silver screw. The bare copper or green wire goes on the green screw. And the black wire gets attached to the brass screw.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:59 PM on January 31, 2015


Ya, you need to break out the joiner tab on the receptacle on the hot side (brass side which should have your black and red wires).

willnot: "Does it matter if the load wires are at the top or bottom of the receptacle. Does one of the neutrals need to be exactly opposite the load wire for the lights?"

There are two ways of doing this; one with two power feeds and the other with only one (this way is much more common). If you have two breakers feeding this outlet then yes you need to get the neutrals separated properly.

Do you by chance have before pictures?

I always make the switched outlet the top of the receptacle but that is just a preference.
posted by Mitheral at 7:20 PM on January 31, 2015


I agree, the first question here is whether the old receptacle was controlled by the switches. That's the case in this diagram, where the lower-left receptacle has a wiring situation that sounds similar to yours. The locations of the neutrals shouldn't matter, but if the bar (tab) is removed so one outlet can be switched then the top-vs-bottom position of the load wires do matter.

As I look at that diagram, if the lower-left receptacle was wired in correctly but the tab not removed, and if the lower-right receptacle was replaced by a light, then that would cause the symptoms you describe.

(Diagram taken from this page which seems like a good resource overall.)
posted by traveler_ at 7:21 PM on January 31, 2015


« Older Vienna in 24 Hours   |   My temperature is rising! Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.