Re: Wiring for dummies

Jul 24, 2003 3 Replies
A

Your sure you have BX? Sounds more like armored cable. Especially since you have a ground. Is there another junction box or device in-between the outlets?



then reverse the wires as indicated, no guarantee that the guy that did it originally did not make a mistake. It was pretty easy to do with BX...


I'm replacing a standard grounded outlet (U.S.). There's BX going into
> and out of the box; after wiring the reds to the "hot" terminals and the
> blacks to the "white" terminals and the green to the grounding screw, my
> tester reads "HOT/GND REV." I've wired two others on the same circuit in
> the same fashion, and the tester reads "OK"
>
> Hints?
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A

Sorry, blonde moment... it is armored cable, and there're white wires coming in and out of the box, connected with a wirenut to a third white wire which is connected to the ground screw at the back of the box, with a green from that same screw to the outlet.

How would I reverse the wires? Certainly I don't want to connect both black wires to the outlet's ground screw, do I?

To complicate things, the original installer (a do-it-yourselfer) left only enough wire to protrude about 3/4" out of the box. Fun!

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T

What type of outlet are you trying to wire? Are you located in the US? IF the answer is yes then that circuit is improperly wired. In US practice the only conductor that can be connected to the silver terminal is the white or gray wire. If you really have armored cable (type AC) then the jacket of the cable is the Equipment grounding conductor. You can confirm this by checking that there is an aluminum bonding strip between the paper wrap that covers the insulated conductors and the armor.

-- Tom

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H

Sounds like your tester is giving you good information. Black is generally the hot lead and should go to the "hot" terminal. Red can mean anything, but it sounds like in this case it is the neutral.

The color convention here in the US is Black is the "hot", White is the "neutral", Green is ground, and typically red or yellow are used for anything else.

Harry C.

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