I’ve been tasked with replacing all our light fixtures. Simple enough, I’m down to the last one and unlike all the others that had a thick copper ground wire coming out with the neutral and hot wires this is just the neutral and hot (knob and tube in most of the House). The fixture is a pendant style with three dangley lights, each light has a hot, neutral and ground, and the fixture itself has a copper ground. Should I cap off the grounds coming from each light and just ground the single copper wire off the body of the fixture to the Ceiling fan box? Ground the theee lights with It to the box? What a completely pain in the ass pulling old fixtures off 100 year old plaster ceilings (my foray into plaster work can be saved for another thread).

(I will be replacing the metal fan box)




Thanks all! I have yet to electrocute myself (this time) and would like to keep it that way

This message has been edited. Last edited by: cmr076,

I'm no electrician, but Are you saying the new lights have 4 wires coming from them? Should be only 3 wires. Hook the Line to the line, the neutrals to the neutral and the bare copper wire to the box itself.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
I'm no electrician, but Are you saying the new lights have 4 wires coming from them? Should be only 3 wires. Hook the Line to the line, the neutrals to the neutral and the bare copper wire to the box itself.

I just fixed the pictures. Each light has a ground in addition to the ground on the body of the fixture. With the other fixtures I did as you described, but each light wasn’t grounded separately. Maybe I’m overthinking it.

I would wait until Skins2881 who is a Master electrician chimes in with the answer you can trust.

It's like if I ever have a high end car and I want to up its horsepower, I would wait for you to chime in.

Tie the three grounds (which are already tied together) to the fixture ground and tie it to the metal box. The green screw on the mounting piece in the second picture is designed to tie down the ground. If the box isn't grounded, this is useless, but it doesn't hurt anything and it is good form. If there is metal (emt) conduit running to box it may be grounded through the conduit.

Other than that, tie the white to the white and the black to the black. That is all you have in knob and tube most of the time anyway. :-)

All metal pieces of fixture should be electrically continuous, that way if an individual socket has a fault your breaker trips instead of you getting shocked. Connect all individual pendants to the main canopy ground wire then you add a pigtail to metal box and attach all grounds to that pigtail.



The reason for the seemingly extra grounds is that the lamp cord to each pendant is non conductive.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
All metal pieces of fixture should be electrically continuous, that way if an individual socket has a fault your breaker trips instead of you getting shocked. Connect all individual pendants to the main canopy ground wire then you add a pigtail to metal box and attach all grounds to that pigtail.



The reason for the seemingly extra grounds is that the lamp cord to each pendant is non conductive.

Just so I’m sure I understand correctly.. wrap the 4 wire from fixture together and instead of grounding them to the green screw on the fan box, make another ground from green screw and wire nut/tape them all together?

One last question. For some reason whoever set up the breaker was either a moron or an asshole (or both) but they seem to have used a dart board to pick what switch controls what; for example breaker 7 controls 1/3 of the basement lights, two kitchen lights but no kitchen outlets, and the entire 3rd floor. It would be nice to have the kitchen lights on a switch, the second floor on a switch and so forth. As it sits, if the breaker trips for a basement light, I lose AC in the bedrooms. It makes no sense

That's right. Five grounds all together, 1 one from canopy, 3 from pendants and 1 from box or fixture bar in your case since it appears you have no ground on the box itself.

As for the circuit layout, kitchen outlets are higher amperage and not allowed to be shared with anything else except the dining room. The rest is due to age of the house, they didn't have window A/C units when the house was built.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
That's right. Five grounds all together, 1 one from canopy, 3 from pendants and 1 from box or fixture bar in your case since it appears you have no ground on the box itself.

As for the circuit layout, kitchen outlets are higher amperage and not allowed to be shared with anything else except the dining room. The rest is due to age of the house, they didn't have window A/C units when the house was built.

Very true. Is that something best left to an actual electrician? Thank you guys for the responses, I’m ripping apart some romex now to make the pigtails

Without knowing EXACTLY how things are done, rewiring the original circuits will be very intrusive. Depending on the age of the house and the wiring type used, and your zoning laws, you might be looking at bringing the whole home up to code.

You might as well bring in a couple of cameras and create your own episode for the HGTV. Yea, it'd be like that.

Lol, a ground is a ground.
Put em together attach to box, pig tail if needed.

quote:

Originally posted by cmr076:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
That's right. Five grounds all together, 1 one from canopy, 3 from pendants and 1 from box or fixture bar in your case since it appears you have no ground on the box itself.

As for the circuit layout, kitchen outlets are higher amperage and not allowed to be shared with anything else except the dining room. The rest is due to age of the house, they didn't have window A/C units when the house was built.

Very true. Is that something best left to an actual electrician? Thank you guys for the responses, I’m ripping apart some romex now to make the pigtails

No need for electrician to bond/ground fixture and box. All you need is the scrap wire, a ground screw, and drill/tap for 10-32 threads if the box does not have pre-tapped holes.

I'd worry more about the integrity of the old rubber and cloth wrapped wiring. Be careful not to break the insulation and tape it anywhere it's crumbling.