Electrical wiring advice please?

STGRule · 07-29-2006, 08:13 AM

I purchased a trio multi-use mini-pendant light set. You can wire each one separately or one separate and two together or all three together. I want to wire all three together. It came with hardware to bridge the three lights and some instructions with wiring diagrams that are very small and very blurry, but I thought I had it figured out. One complicating factor is the bridge pieces supplied (tube with a black wire and a white wire) make the lights only 10 inches apart. I needed them to be 24 inches apart. The next complicating factor is I don't have power to where I wanted to hang the light set so I decided to wire in a plug cord that I wired through a dimmer switch mounted through a cabinet. I got a heavy-duty 3-prong cord and set to work. It doesn't work. I wired it like the top picture (excuse my crude artwork). Should it be like the bottom drawing? I wanted it to be grounded through the plug as I don't have a box to ground the fixtures to. Is that the problem? The red lines in my drawing are actually the white wires, but white lines don't show up on a white background. :blush: The yellow lines are the ground wires. The fixtures will take up to 100 watt bulbs but I have 60's in them right now.

Any ideas on how to make it work?

wthr4d · 07-29-2006, 08:37 AM

either pattern should work. with the top one you wont be able to see if any one light has a failure as they ALL will not work. If you wire it like the bottom picture they will be independant of each other. Obviously you will need to go buy some wire to make this work since your kit didnt include enough.

to trouble shoot this I would go back to the source. that is wherever you have the house electricity coming into your new "circuit". go through EACH wire and check for conductivity. Make sure to do this with NO POWER coming into your "circuit". Once you have established that all wires have conductivity throughout the system. you would need to add power and check for incoming voltage at the switch and each lamp.

The other option if you dont have the voltmeter with conductivity sensor would be to wire each lamp into your setup "separately". what I mean is wire in one lamp and make sure it works then "add" a lamp to the series and check its function and so on until you get all of them wired in and working.

DISCLAIMER-- I am not an electrician or electrical engineer. only a jack of all trades, handy around the house type with an incomplete college education. good luck youre on your own!

Paul

STGRule · 07-29-2006, 08:48 AM

That might explain some. One of my new bulbs may just be bad. I didn't have sparks

or trip a breaker when I tried to turn them on so a bad bulb could be the problem. If this will be the norm with this wiring pattern I will rewire to the bottom scheme. Thanks. I have the wire I need to do it, just not looking forward to taking it all down again.

Hunt'nFish · 07-29-2006, 09:12 AM

There is abosolutely no diffeance between the two pics. And it doesn't matter if one bulb is burned out or not on either pic.
Obviously there is no power, so something must be wrong at the source or dimmer. Black wire should come from the source to the dimmer, out the dimmer to the lights. White should be un interrupted and the ground should be uninterupted but a tag connected to the gnd on the dimmer. (safety code requires it)

Father & Brother are Electricians, I am in the electronics field. But I'll take the same disclaimer thought. :grin:

Revise your drawing to include EVERYTHING as what you have shown so far is correct. Problem lies elsewhere.
Hunt'nFish

STGRule · 07-29-2006, 10:46 AM

Now I'm confused. That's exactly how I did it. Down to the ground on the dimmer switch. Hmmmm. Guess it's time to pull out the volt meter and trace my connections. Either that or all three of my "on sale" bulbs are bad. I think I'll check that first.

STGRule · 07-29-2006, 11:20 AM

Okay. The outlet works and so do all three bulbs. I will now check every connection to make sure they are tight.
This is the complete crayon drawing of how I wired it.

STGRule · 07-29-2006, 11:43 AM

It works!!!! One white wire pulled out of the wire nut when I was cramming the wires back into the electrical box that holds the dimmer switch. The thing that ticks me off is I tugged on every connection to make sure it was tight before I closed everything up. Oh well. Just operator error.

At least I know I'm enough of an "intelligent woman" to have gotten the wiring sequence part of it right.

Hunt'nFish · 07-29-2006, 03:58 PM

Congrats! Don't feel bad, it happens to best of us once in a while.
Hunt'nFish