Fuses keep blowing

[MarkLesko]

I live in an old house and the light in the bedroom has a pull string and not a switch. I wanted a switch so I found the outlet nearest the door and I removed the outlet and replaced it with a switch. Its kind of low to the floor for a switch (about 18 inches), but thats better than no switch at all. There were 2 wires in there, one black one kind of a gray color. I put one wire on each screw on the switch. Then I bought a switch cover because the outlet cover would not fit on the switch. Whenever I turn on the switch, the fuse blows. I have bought 3 boxes of fuses this week alone and that's getting expensive. I even tried a larger fuse after the hardware store guy told me to try a 30 instead of a 15. He said I'd get twice as much power. Them fuses blows too when I turn on the switch. I then tried reversing the wires on the switch screws, but it still blows the fuses.

Is the problem because the switch is too low to the floor? What should I do?

Thank You. Mark Lesko

[David Nebenzahl]

On 9/8/2010 1:16 PM [e-mail] spake thus:

Nice try.

I give your troll about a 2-1/2.

[hrhofmann]

You shoudn't even have bothered to reply, let Darwin get his chance.

[AZ Nomad]

You can't possibly be this stupid. Please tell me you're a troll.

[Jack Hammer]

Replace the fuses with a breaker. It will save you money and it's a good way to exercise.

[J Burns]

You have a short circuit. I've had a short circuit with an outlet four feet from the floor. You can make the circuit longer by using an outlet farther from the door, not the floor.

[Higgs Boson]

What has the outlet too close to floor got to do with short circuit? Inquiring minds...

HB

[clare]

It would be a "long circuit" if the wiring cabe down from the attic. Is that a clue??

[David Nebenzahl]

On 9/9/2010 12:22 PM [e-mail] spake thus:

I actually thought that part of the troll was somewhat clever. Got a short circuit? Hey, just make it a little longer!

This actually played out in real life for me one time. Had a client with a very strange electrical problem. He had three switches next to his front door. Two worked fine (overhead outside light and a security light). But the third one would cause a very long delayed trip of a circuit breaker if switched on, accompanied by a loud humming sound.

After tracing his wiring up through his garage, I discovered that the problem was in a very long line (close to 100') that went up to what was once a light fixture at the end of his driveway. The fixture had long since been removed, but they just left the line (wires in conduit) in place. They were shorted near the end, so this was essentially a very long short circuit. (Long enough not to immediately trip the breaker.)

[J Burns]

Shorted, I'd expect 100 feet of 16 gage cable to draw about 150 amps, 12 gage about 370. Might there somehow have been series inductance? (I once ran the current to my water heater through the low-impedance side of a transformer. The high-impedance side ran an odometer-type 24VAC clock to show how many hours the water heater ran.)

[David Nebenzahl]

On 9/10/2010 2:38 PM J Burns spake thus:

Nope, nothing but a long run of cable in that circuit. 12 ga. if I remember correctly (20 A circuit). It took several seconds before the breaker tripped. The actual short might have had a bit of resistance, though (corroded wires touching).

[Jeff Thies]

There's a lot of stupid going on.

I knew someone that wired a light switch in parallel with the outlet.

Worked great as a power switch. Turning on the switch turned off the power.

This sounds the same to me.

Jeff