The two wires coming from the ceiling electrical box are, one brown and one red. To put in a new light fixture that has a black a white and the ground wire,,,what wire goes to the brown wire and what to the red wire? Regarding the green ground wire what would I do? Also if I was to put in a light/ceiling fan what wires would go to the brown and red wires from the ceiling. Patt
On what planet, continent, country, district, county, borough and neighbourhood.
Brown and Red by themselves doesn't sound like any legal wiring I've ever heard of.
What colour matches to what on the light switch?
The address implies Canada. (shaw.ca) That "brown" may be white with some age on it and red will be the same as black. Red is commonly used for the switched conductor in the new world.
Patt, it makes no difference how you connect them. The light or fan will work just fine either way you hook it up.
I'd recommend you hook the Red to your Black wire and the Brown to your White wire, but you won't notice the difference..
But if you want to investigate further, you can trace the red and brown wire back to where they tie into a black and white wire.
Black is the hot wire and White is the neutral wire. The bare copper or the green wire is the ground - which is not often used on lights.
False.
The neutral conductor is supposed to be connected to the shell of the lamp, and the hot conductor to the central contact pin. The purpose of this is to reduce the risk of electric shock when changing light bulbs.
Yes, it will -- but one way is safer than the other way.
Won't notice the difference unless he happens to get his fingers on the base of the bulb while changing bulbs, anyway...
It makes a difference. If there's a switch on the lamp, then your neutral would/could be interrupted, another no-no. Tom
To put that in perspective...
AND, the wall switch is on, AND, he's also touching something grounded.....
Jeff
Good point. In practice, I try to change lightbulbs when the switch is on, especially if I have to stand on something to change the bulb, so I don't have to go up and down too many times.
Girls tell me I have animal magnetism, and my uncle says I'm well grounded. I guess I should be careful.
First thing I would do is test whether the mounting box is grounded (via armored cable, or anything. If it is, you can find out which incoming wire is hot by testing with a neon tester against the case. If it's not, you'll have to test against the ground wire of an extention cord.
If the box is grounded, that's where the ground for the lamp goes. The black wire on the lamp goes to whichever wire is hot in the mounting box, the white one goes to the other.
Note that to do this test, you have to shut off the power, take the ceiling box apart, spread the wires, turn the power back on, test all the wires to see what's what, turn the power back off, and mount the lamp.
Jeff I've transported some pretty seriously injured electric shock victims on the ambulance in the course of thirty years of service who were not grounded at the time of the shock. When someone gets a shock all affected muscles contract and the stronger ones win the argument. This can cause people to throw themselves of of ladders, smash their head into things and so forth.
Also many ceiling lights require you to hold on to some grounded part with one hand while re lamping with the other hand. Some examples are chain supported fixtures and most chandeliers. Add to that the folks who climb on chairs and balance themselves by holding on the fixture and you have a real hazard.
I agree completely, and touching a metal fixture body was the first thing which came to my mind which would ground (most likely) the bulb changer's other hand.
I was trying to point out that just touching the base of the bulb while it was still partially screwed into a cross wired socket wouldn't necessarily give him/her a shock, other things were needed to power up and complete the "shocking" circuit.
In retrospect I believe it would have been better if I'd just kept my smart-ass comments to myself.
Jeff
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