arg! a simple replacement of light fixture that i thought had gone on the fritz is now a pain in the ass.
wire has no juice, on the same circuit other lights do have juice. splice came apart or something in the wire itself...
i did not wire the place so i'm not sure how that run of wire goes, but it has no play in it at all.
if i can't get it figured out from looking at it below (probably won't be able to see anything) would it be ok to run a segment from a nearby GFCI plug for it? i can maybe do that without opening up the wall/drywall.
Have you verified the switch isn't bad? Is it a one-location switch or multiple?
After that, there should be no splice anywhere excepting in an accessible box; just trace back each likely location where the run likely went looking for the disconnect.
While possible, the likelihood of a break _in_ the wire is much lower, although it's possible somebody drove a nail thru the insulation and that or something similar has finally actually caused a failure.
it was a direct wire connection to an existing fixture which i replaced in January. it worked fine until this week when it stopped with a little spark in the switch on the fixture so i just figured i had a bad fixture and took it back out and returned it.
today when putting in the replacedment i hooked it up (luckily did not solder it yet) and turned on the breaker to test it out and there was no juice. new fixture did not work. unhooked fixture and verified no juice. other light on the same breaker did light up so it is just this part that is out.
i will have to wait until Sunday until i can get back to this.
there are no plugs on that same run. the GFCI plugs are a different breaker. they are close enough to the hole so it may be an option to use one of them to feed the light instead of tearing the plaster out.
if they did it was done 20yrs ago. nothing has been done to this wall since it was built. why it failed months after i replaced the fixture is just odd.
You will need to figure out where the wire that is feeding that light fixture is coming from and check the connections there. It could be coming directly from the switch or another light fixture that is controlled by the same switch.
there is no box, it is one direct wire to a fixture. the fixture being removed there is no box, just a wire. a dead wire. don't know where it goes yet.
very unlikely i can get to it or find out.
which is why i asked if it would be ok to run an alternate feed from a nearby GFCI plug instead (which is on a different circuit).
Bad idea on the face of it...how would you propose get the new wire to the location any easier than finding the old?
If there is no box at the fixture, unless the fixture it self has one in its mounting, that's a Code violation there, so would imply this wasn't done prior to an electrical inspection...
It seems from other descriptions there's more than one light fixture controlled by the switch in question??? If so, and the other light still functions then the feed has to from that location or neither would work.
If there isn't a bad neutral or hot connection at the other light on that switch that leads to this fixture, I'd suggest it's time to go ahead and bite the bullet and call in the electrician to fix whatever issue you have. It's not worth the potential risk if there is something like I described earlier happening.
had electrician friend stop over to look at it. he pulled off covers of various light switches to see if he could figure out where the wire was being fed from. after about an hour he agreed with me that running a connection to the nearest GFCI plug would be much easier than wasting more time. he'll be back tomorrow to do that.
there are two lights on a track above the sink which are controlled by a switch on the right side of the sink but that switch does not control the power to the fixture in question. there are other lights on the same circuit controlled by two other light switches, but after inspecting the switches he saw no other feeds going off which may be powering this light fixture. also there was only one wire from the fuse box so it wasn't fed from there.
short of fishing a camera through the wall, poking holes and various other crawlings around i think we're going to be much better off just poking another hole and fishing a short chunk of new wire and then i should have juice and can put the fixture back up where it belongs...
i do have another issue where a flexible camera on a line would come in handy so eventually i may buy one and trace the dead wire to make sure it isn't a fire hazard. in the meantime we'll be ok.
nothing came up wrong that he could find.
thanks for your replies (everyone! :) ).
also glad that the hot water heater was fixable today and the plumber who did it was a decent sort.
i didn't think the wire nuts were going to hold very well, the wire that was being used before had no play in it and there was some tension on the connections. it was a bitch to hook up.
the guy yesterday told me that he never soldered anything he did and he also was impressed by how good a job the guy did on our wiring here so that made me breath a little easier with wire nuts.
so i did not solder the new connections yesterday.
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