Author Topic: Bathroom light repair  (Read 1213 times)

Omalley

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Bathroom light repair
« on: December 02, 2017, 10:04:34 AM »
I am moderately handy around the house with the help of Youtube.  However, I normally don't tackle electrical issues.  When a four fixture light in the bathroom stopped working I suspected an issue with the wall switch.

After referring to Youtube I felt ready to tackle the problem.  No issues with the switch (power flowing per the voltmeter), so onto the light.  No apparent issues, but I removed and tightly replaced the two wire connections.  After turning back on the breaker, flooded witn light again. 

I am guessing an electrician would have charged $100 to show up, and who knows what they would have suggested to fix the problem.  Thanks to the MMM community for providing their own examples to give me the confiidence to try this myself.

BTDretire

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Re: Bathroom light repair
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2017, 07:46:03 AM »
I've been doing household elctrical repairs as long as I can remember. I even wired a complete room with a circuit breaker box and power meter.
 That said, you should continue learning, before anymore repairs come up.
Electrical is pretty easy, but you need to do it right, to protect yourself and the property.
 Make sure you make good connections, (a bad connection gets hot).
I once added a heavy load to a circuit (two chest freezers) it was fine, the circuit breaker never popped. However a couple years down the road I had a burning smell in my living room. That first time I didn't find the source and the smell disappeared. I had several cycles like that, before I notice the plug on my tv at one outlet was hot. From there I opened up the wall and found the outlet was just about to crumble. This was about 35 years after the home was built. I suspect it had a slightly bad connection and then over the years it just got worse.
 This outlet had a feedthru, meaning power came to the outlet and a wire left carrying power to the the next outlet and then to my two freezers. when the freezer or freezers ran the outlet got hot (at that bad connection) and smelled, as soon as the freezers shut off the outlet cooled off and no more smell.
 Anyway, it had been over heating long enough that the wire was overheated about a foot back, I had to cut the wire back and add new wire to get to the outlet.
 That could have turned out much worse.

 btw, after that repair is when I ran a new line, installed a circuit breaker box and several new outlets for the freezers. The incident shook me.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!