I got a metal hole in the wall where there are 4 wires. There is a red, white and black. Then there is a wire that is an error because they forgot to put the colored plastic stuff on it. When I bought this house there was no light in the bathroom. I have lived with this for 11 years but decided its time to fix this. I wont use that error wire because its defective but the other 3 are confusing. When I hook the red to the black the lights go out in the bedrooms. If I hook the red to white nothing happens and when I hooked the black to the white there were lots of sparks, my finger got burned, and the whole house went dark. I had to go in the basement and change that thing they call a fuse. There was a 30 on the old one so the guy at the dollar store told me to get a 30 bolt one. I asked him why they call it 30 bolts and he said its because it takes 30 bolts to fasten the wires and keep them from wiggling on the electric pole. That makes sense. Anyhow, I replaced that fuse. I wonder why they are called fuses? They dont look like the fuse on fireworks. But when I replaced it, the lights in the house work again, but still not the bathroom light. I bet the problem is that defective error wire and it needs to be changed. I dont know how to do that. I thought about cutting it off and putting a piece of some other color wire on the end of it, but what color should I use, and how many bolts do I need to hook them together so they dont wiggle? What should I do to fix this mess?
Margo