Do We Have a Forum Member Electrician Here Somewhere?

[Dibbons]

I am trying to diagnose some electrical outlet wiring discrepancies that I found after having purchased a little three prong outlet tester. The Mexican "electricians" around this new construction have come and gone so it's up to me to figure all of this out.

Basically, the tester has one red indicator light and two amber indicator lights. When the test is inserted into a three prong outlet, it can diagnose incorrect or incomplete circuits by assessing which of the three lamps are on or off.

Two amber lights indicate circuit wired correctly, easy enough (see photo one).

One amber light (the center one) indicates an open ground and I assume that would be pointing to the third/round terminal (see photo two).

Not noted in the instructions, is what I am finding in about half of the installed outlets, which is the center amber light on, and the other amber light on, but very dim (see photo three). It is this finding that I came here to the forum to inquire about. Is anyone here qualified to tell me what the problem is when the center amber light is strong/bright and the other amber light is weak/faint? In the photo, the weak amber looks super faint, but in person it actually is phasing weaker, then a little brighter, then weaker again. Or let's just say it is kinda blinking.

For your information, the red light is not on in any of the three photos. Thank you.
Thank you.

 

[BeepBeepRR]

An open ground means that there is no ground wire attached to the green screw on the receptacle. Or its not hooked up in a junction box. All grounds in a junction box must be twisted and crimped. An open neutral means either the neutral is not hooked up or its loose in another junction box in the circuit.

I would think that the weak light would be also indication that it has power but its either not getting a ground or a neutral. Depends on how they have the bulbs hooked up inside that tester. You have to have 2 points of contact for a bulb to work. Hot and either or ground or a neutral. I think they must have that bulb hooked up to the ground. If there is a broken ground its going to act weird.

Black wire is hot
White wire is neutral
Bare copper is ground.

Now the receptacle has 3 screws.

Brass/Gold/sometimes black screw. black wire installed there
Silver screw is the neutral screw
Green usually on the body of the receptacle or switch is the ground.

 

[Dibbons]

Thanks, that's a start.

One other question, when it comes to the two flat bladed terminals, which one is the wider one and which one should be the narrower one (talking about polarized terminal set-up, whatever that means)?

 

[slepr1]

Wider one is usually the white neutral wire

 

[BeepBeepRR]

Smaller is hot, wide is the neutral.

 

[kiwigtx]

Since we use different colour cables, and a different earthing (ground) system, I'm not dipping my toes in here this time.

 

[alsant]

A volt meter will help. If you have one.
The testers are good but a volt meter will give you a more accurate reading of your problem or problems.

 

[kiwigtx]

A volt meter will help. If you have one.
The testers are good but a volt meter will give you a more accurate reading of your problem or problems.

I never trust a 'Volt-stick' or non-contact tester.

They are only good as an indication....and even then they're not 100% accurate.

Always use a quality set of Voltage testers, and utilise the "Test-Prove-Test" principle.

....so much for not sticking my toes in here...

 

[BB BELLA]

Black/Gold poor ground is suggestet for one lit,one dim

 

[Paul_B]

You might want start by pulling an outlet out of the box to see what the so called electricians have for wiring if you suspect it’s subpar. Seeing the wire in the wall box will help you understand if they even used the correct wire. Make sure the circuits are off at the breaker before taking anything apart.

Hopefully you do have a ground wire. I will say I have seen houses wired without a ground wire or electrician hacks do something to pass off as a ground to some testers by jumping a common to the ground in the box.

When your tester has the weak/blinking light this could be a bad/weak/intermittent ground connection somewhere. Even something else plugged into the circuit in the same chain of outlets could be tricking your meter for the weak/blinking light.

 

[Outlawd]

white on light and black on dark....or white on silver side and black on gold side

 

[Moms68]

Hopefully you don’t have reversed polarity. This would make the neutral a hot leg. Best to have a licensed guy check your house out starting with the service panel.

 

[kiwigtx]

This would make the neutral a hot leg.

Sorry....I had to ....

 

[Triplegreen500]

...If you're new to electricity, turn the breaker OFF before you pull the outlet out of the wall. I presume you run 110v AC - it'll tickle for a minute, scare the hell out of you, but shouldn't kill you. But, you can arc/weld with a screwdriver or any cross-contact, and that's an outstanding way to start a fire.

An addendum to the color codes above - somtimes, depending on the wire type or brand, the ground will be green. Also, depending on code and installation type, sometimes the ground wire goes from the outlet, to the outlet box, and aren't routed all the way to the breaker box. This is OLD code here in the USA, but you still find that in some places that haven't been renovated (or have only been half-*** renovated).

 

[BeepBeepRR]

While I agree with the above post. 90% of residential junction boxes are plastic or some sort of fiber box there is no reason to ground the box. It would be impossibel to ground a plastic box and useless. This would be indicative to metal boxes such as what we call 1900 boxes or 4 inch square boxes with a plaster ring. In this application yes you install a bond jumper and tie in all of the grounds to that bond jumper. But that's more of a commercial style box. I have seen very few houses with metal boxes. I do realize the codes are different around the country and from town to town.

Not my picture and not my wiring but I would never do grounds this long. The point of this picture is that generally you twist the grounds and crimp them. This guy just crimped them. Also the use of a wirenut and 2 jumper grounds is retarded. All he had to do was crimp all 3 wires and cut 1 of them out so he would have 2 wires left one for each switch. The addition of the wire nut and 2 jumpers was not needed.

 

[kiwigtx]

While I agree with the above post. 90% of residential junction boxes are plastic or some sort of fiber box there is no reason to ground the box. It would be impossibel to ground a plastic box and useless. This would be indicative to metal boxes such as what we call 1900 boxes or 4 inch square boxes with a plaster ring. In this application yes you install a bond jumper and tie in all of the grounds to that bond jumper. But that's more of a commercial style box. I have seen very few houses with metal boxes. I do realize the codes are different around the country and from town to town.

Do you guys have insulated ground wires yet?

Like this...

Sorry...I remembered.......you use Black & White. All those bare ground wires in the switchboard.....scary sheeet. I suppose being 110 Volts....can't come to too much grief.
Red & Black are so much easier to use....just like the Metric System.

 

[Triplegreen500]

As I said - OLD stuff in the USA.

I recently renovated the upstairs apartment in my 1952 duplex rental property. Knob and tube, cloth wrap wires, hot/neutral, and grounded metal boxes mounted to wood studs behind plaster and lathe.

I installed a new breaker box, with the stupid new (expen$$$ive) arc-fault breakers, replaced every single inch of wiring, every single box (now plastic), added a bunch of circuits, and heavy-upped the apartment from 100A (no heat pump, no washer/dryer) to 200A (heat pump, washer/dryer hookups, and new circuits added here and there including the newly-finished attic, and code-added lighting and outlet on the balcony).

 

[BeepBeepRR]

I do not believe I have ever used stranded romex in 30 plus years of doing electrical work.

 

[kiwigtx]

I do not believe I have ever used stranded romex in 30 plus years of doing electrical work.

I don't know what romex is.....but we outlawed solid stranded cable back in the 1970's - unless it is 1.0mm for lighting.

Reason been that people were not tightening the terminals up correctly - either loose connections, or breaking the terminal screws on socket outlets.

 

[BeepBeepRR]

As I said - OLD stuff in the USA.

I recently renovated the upstairs apartment in my 1952 duplex rental property. Knob and tube, cloth wrap wires, hot/neutral, and grounded metal boxes mounted to wood studs behind plaster and lathe.

I installed a new breaker box, with the stupid new (expen$$$ive) arc-fault breakers, replaced every single inch of wiring, every single box (now plastic), added a bunch of circuits, and heavy-upped the apartment from 100A (no heat pump, no washer/dryer) to 200A (heat pump, washer/dryer hookups, and new circuits added here and there including the newly-finished attic, and code-added lighting and outlet on the balcony).

I always get a kick out of finding knob and tube stuff. I don't collect the stuff but my coworker made a display with all the old stuff he finds.

Arc fault is the dumbest ******* code they ever started enforcing. Those things are worthless and many customers ask me to remove them after their final.