PLEASE READ: My initial intent was to simply make a video showing how crazy this wiring situation was. The further I got into it, I thought I could fix it. I did not think it out completely. At about the 11 minute mark, I make a big mistake. I put a pigtail on the neutral to feed both the receptacle and the switch. This is very WRONG. What I was using as the neutral is not the neutral, but it is what goes from the switch to supply power to the exhaust fan. This is NOT the neutral. This should not have been used to provide a neutral to the receptacle. Doing this causes current to run through the exhaust fan, and it puts the load plugged into the receptacle in a series circuit with the exhaust fan. This is a MISTAKE because it will also put voltage on the ground wire. After speaking further with the homeowner, I learned that previously there were only three switches in this box. There was not a receptacle/outlet. This means that, theoretically, all three wires coming into this box to supply the switches contain a hot wire and then the return wire that will supply power to the loads such as an exhaust fan or a light. There is no true neutral in this box, so there is no way to supply a neutral to the receptacle while also properly wiring the switch to operate the exhaust fan. The only way to make this set up work correctly is to run a new wire from the attic down into the box. I have temporarily removed the pigtail that I put onto the neutral wire at about the 11 minute mark of the video since this created an unsafe situation. As a result, there is now a working exhaust fan, but there is not a working receptacle at this time. I appreciate everyone who has watched the video and commented on it.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 interesting. So if I'm understanding correctly all the original switches in that box were wired using a two wire switch loop fairly common in homes built before the 1980s? If so, and you really want to have a working receptacle outlet, one of the 2 wire switch loops would have to be replaced with a 14/3 or 12/3 cable from the fixture to the switch box, or if there is an open basement or crawl space, it might be easiest to jump a 2 wire Romex from the nearest receptacle outlet to this switch box. Fortunately in homes built after 2014 I believe, this won't be a problem since that when the code began the requirement of having an available neutral in the switch box, for certain types of electronic switches or dimmers that need a neutral to function properly. Anyway, glad you finished piecing together this awkward puzzle.
It looked like the tab connecting the switch hot and the receptacle hot was still intact. It also looked like the fan and receptacle were different circuits, so shouldn't that tab have been removed?
I thought the same as you originally, but when I looked at it closer, I saw that the tab had already been removed. If it hadn’t, then there would’ve been a direct short between the two different legs. If the tab had been there, then I would not have had to do the pigtail, but would’ve just had to hook up one wire and then it would’ve served both the switch and the outlet.
Wow. Looks like the hot from one leg was connected to the neutral terminal of the device with the exhaust connected to neutral gave the hot/neutral reverse reading and approx 120V with the meter, and the hot from the other leg was hooked to the switch in a way that also controlled the outlet, and closing the switch connected both legs to the outlet and powered the fan as well. Some wise words of advice from my grandfather, a lineman and master electrician for many years. "Never trust colors, trust your meter" preferably with one probe connected to a known ground, depending on the situation
That one had me stumped and scratching my head. Can't say that I've ever seen a switch/receptacle combo device wired with the switched load and receptacle on different circuits, though I have been in a small handful of homes where 20 amp circuits were used for all the receptacle outlets, and 15 amp circuits used for all the lighting outlets and smoke detector outlets, so I can see myself running into a situation like that in the future. The most dangerous wiring problem I've seen so far, certainty debatable, in my opinion was in July 2005 when I was 15, helping my stepfather redo the electrical and plumbing in the rambler built in 1973 that he purchased earlier that year. As can be expected from a home built in that timeframe, aluminum wiring throughout, end up completely rewiring with copper because several outlets and switches were torched and the wiring was too far gone to use copper pigtails in several outlet boxes. Zinsco panel with 70 amp main in a bedroom closet. I made the discovery that the 40 gallon electric water heater was wired with 12 gauge low volt landscape lighing zip cord running almost the entire length of the home in the crawl space, so Dad brought some 10-2 NM and a disconnect switch (heater was not within sight of the breaker box) from Menard's. With the main breaker turned off to ensure my safety in the damp crawl space after seeing some horrific electrical work already, I take my diagonal cutters to cut the wires feeding the water heater, and I get a bang as loud as a shotgun and blinding flash, my face was blackened and facial hair singed. After laying in the crawlspace for a minute or so and realize I'm still alive, I pick up my diagonal cutters and the tip was completely vaporized. Come to find out the water heater circuit had been tapped off the line side of the main, you had to pull the meter if you wanted to turn off the water heater, and the lugs at the main breaker were arc welded in place, some of the breakers were welded to the bus bar as well. Changing out the panel required first cutting the service conductors out with a pair of bolt cutters as a result. How that house was still standing I have no idea.
In a case like this it might be helpful to have a male 120 V plug with three alligator clips on it and then with your socket tester plugged into that you can attached your clips to the bare wires going to the outlet/switch and be make it easier to figure out the power/neutral/ground wires. Once you see how they are connected in the circuit you can then wire the switch accordingly. Thanks for leaving the spark show to show how easy it is to do that (Been there done that too)
Good advice. I debated whether to leave or take out the spark incident. I decided to leave it for mostly entertainment value. The stats that I have on my video show that that is the most watched part of the entire video, so I guess a lot of people are rewinding to see it again.
Looks like the white "neutral" connected to the neutral screw was in fact the hot from the other leg and the exhaust fan provided a path to neutral to give the tester a hot-neutral reverse reading and your meter a 120V reading. The other "neutral" on top of the switch/outlet was the other hot leg powering the outlet and exhaust fan; closing the switch completed the 240V circuit to the outlet and powered the exhaust fan. A wise word of advice. Never trust colors, trust your meter, after first checking it on a known live circuit of course.
So I may have missed something here, but did you ever eliminate the 240 in the switchbox? Are you running everything from one of the circuits that is fed into the box or how is it now wired? It's quite common to find 2 sources in a switch box. That's not a real issue when they're both on the same phase, but when you have 240V in that same box it can get exciting very quickly. Please tell us you don't still have 240V wired into that combo switch...
No. I disconnected one of the legs and capped that off. Only one leg/phase is being used now. I ran a pigtail to supply both the switch and the receptacle.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 Good man. The next thing you can do is turn the breaker off for that circuit & see if you lose anything else. If nothing else is on it, leave the breaker off & pull the wire from it. Leave it in the panel in case something turns up without power in the future.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 Good man! I would suggest going back into the panel & removing the wire you have capped off, from the breaker unless you know it also feeds something else. leave it in the panel in case you find something without power at a later date...
I once found above a drop ceiling in a basement 3 #6 bare copper wires stapled to the floor joists a couple inches apart, 2 were live, they ran to a 30A dryer outlet not in a box just screwed to stud in a wood panel wall the last 2ft of the #6 lines were taped up. And where did this guy tap into for power because this was a fuse panel? Of course the line side of the main disconnect/fuse.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 I tiptoed outside to pull the meter. I still remember it was a little old lady, her son in law apparently had some wire he found in his basement, and put it in when she switched from a gas dryer to electric because the gas one made her nervous🤦
i wonder if the guy who did the electrical was the same as the person who put that "shelf" in. The one "L" bracket still has the sticker on it. Maybe at least try to paint the "L" brackets!
10:10 Saw that coming from two counties away, very sloppy with the test probes. It would have been a lot quicker to just disconnect everything noting where they were and test each wire, if it is hot or neutral (continuity to ground) and which circuit is it on. Test the switch for continuity, is the tab on and does it work? Your wiring diagram shows line 1 as +120 and line 2 as -120. What is -120? You should have a real electrician look at this. Never tested with the fan on either.
I could’ve been more careful. I decided to leave that in. And the funny thing is according to the stats I see, that is the most watched part of the video. So I guess at least it has some entertainment value.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 That's true! For most people it's a rare or non-existent experience to see a dead short like that. No one gets hurt and the pop is quite startling. I'm an electrician and I watched it a few times lol. Mehdi would approve!
Given what you had, I would have pulled both switches out of the box, disconnected everything, and verified what wire is going where. The reversed colors may have been behind the other switch. It's also possible that they are backwards in the breaker panel. Either way, it may possibly have been fixed without pulling new wire. I would also have traced the circuit all the way back to the panel, box by box, if the reversal wasn't behind the other switch or in the panel.
Yes, that would’ve been the best way to handle it. As I stated in my pinned comment, my initial plan was just to make a video showing how bad the wiring was and to disconnect the second leg so that we did not have 240 V in that box. But as I got going, I wanted to try to fix it all (which I did not do.) If I had gone in initially, planning to fix it all, I definitely would’ve traced the wires and figured out exactly what was going where and coming from where.
You only need one hot wire on the right side with the tab still in place. One neutral on the lower left for the outlet. The top left will be hot when the switch is turned on for the fan.
You are very correct. The tabs were not in place, however. Also, I discovered a big problem with my final wiring job. I have described it in my pinned comment on this video. There is not a true neutral wire at all in this box, so it is not possible to properly wire the switch and the receptacle with the existing wiring.
At 1-minute in, when he sees 240v, that's where he should have stopped, flagged the outlet and taped it off so it couldn't be used, and CALL AN ELECTRICIAN! The vast majority of "home inspectors" are simply NOT qualified to even be removing the cover plate, much less trying to troubleshoot the problem...
Well, that would have made for a very boring video, wouldn’t it? I knew there was 240 V before I did anything at all. I did not do this as a home inspector. I did this as a friend of the homeowner. She wasn’t going to do anything about it. Now she has a safer bathroom.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 I totally missed that part. I thought you (morganinspectionservices3840) were a licensed qualified electrician. That fact puts this video in a completely different light. It is nice of you to "help" the homeowner but please tell me you are recommending the homeowner call a properly certified, experienced and insured electrician to permanently sort out this mess (not just bury a hot neutral behind a wire-nut in the back of the box). -Respectfully
No. This is not trial and error. Trial and error is just hooking things up randomly and seeing what happens. I checked voltages. I found the hot wires. I found the neutral wires. I had a pretty good idea of how screwed up the wiring was initially, and had a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to make things work. Sure, I did not trace the wires up to the attic and see where each of them ran, and which one actually went to the exhaust fan, and which ones came from the electric panel. I did assume that one wire was a neutral when it wasn’t, and had to fix that so if you wanna call that one trial and error then OK.
What ???? Am I the only one that noticed? Man you wired the outlet to use the blower fan return as a newtral. Your outlet DOESN'T HAVE A WORKING NEUTRAL. disconnect it immediately. Any device powered by this plug will force current through the fan too. If the load on the outlet is heavy the fan will also turn on. This has also rendered the earthing system of this outlet dangerous because there will be a significant potential between your persived neutral and ground. You are lucky that there is no actual neutral in that box because you absolutely cannot connect a hot and a neutral across a switch the way you attempted with the double pigtails this will cause a dead short at the switch when turned on. Stick to your job as an inspector and hire an actual electrician to fix the issue properly. Also no comments on the way you use the testing gear to probe inside live conductive boxes. 😱
Why would they run two power cables to this electrical box?. Nothing here needs 240. Unless if the negative is cross wired/powered from another outlet. Bingo
How so? If I had to wager, this bathroom used to have a fan with a heating element and that heating element either needed 220v or it needed its own 120v feed. At some point, someone removed that particular fan and didn't understand that they had an extra hot and simply connected everything together. That is a quality of work issue, not a quality of design issue. Recall that the reason the US has 120v to most household outlets is because we could afford the copper. Running at lower voltages when appropriate brings all sorts of advantages, but it requires more wiring.
PLEASE READ: My initial intent was to simply make a video showing how crazy this wiring situation was. The further I got into it, I thought I could fix it. I did not think it out completely. At about the 11 minute mark, I make a big mistake. I put a pigtail on the neutral to feed both the receptacle and the switch. This is very WRONG. What I was using as the neutral is not the neutral, but it is what goes from the switch to supply power to the exhaust fan. This is NOT the neutral. This should not have been used to provide a neutral to the receptacle. Doing this causes current to run through the exhaust fan, and it puts the load plugged into the receptacle in a series circuit with the exhaust fan. This is a MISTAKE because it will also put voltage on the ground wire.
After speaking further with the homeowner, I learned that previously there were only three switches in this box. There was not a receptacle/outlet. This means that, theoretically, all three wires coming into this box to supply the switches contain a hot wire and then the return wire that will supply power to the loads such as an exhaust fan or a light. There is no true neutral in this box, so there is no way to supply a neutral to the receptacle while also properly wiring the switch to operate the exhaust fan. The only way to make this set up work correctly is to run a new wire from the attic down into the box.
I have temporarily removed the pigtail that I put onto the neutral wire at about the 11 minute mark of the video since this created an unsafe situation. As a result, there is now a working exhaust fan, but there is not a working receptacle at this time.
I appreciate everyone who has watched the video and commented on it.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 interesting. So if I'm understanding correctly all the original switches in that box were wired using a two wire switch loop fairly common in homes built before the 1980s? If so, and you really want to have a working receptacle outlet, one of the 2 wire switch loops would have to be replaced with a 14/3 or 12/3 cable from the fixture to the switch box, or if there is an open basement or crawl space, it might be easiest to jump a 2 wire Romex from the nearest receptacle outlet to this switch box. Fortunately in homes built after 2014 I believe, this won't be a problem since that when the code began the requirement of having an available neutral in the switch box, for certain types of electronic switches or dimmers that need a neutral to function properly. Anyway, glad you finished piecing together this awkward puzzle.
That was a crazy install, well done getting that mess sorted! Thanks for sharing👍🏻
@@H750S thanks
It looked like the tab connecting the switch hot and the receptacle hot was still intact. It also looked like the fan and receptacle were different circuits, so shouldn't that tab have been removed?
I thought the same as you originally, but when I looked at it closer, I saw that the tab had already been removed. If it hadn’t, then there would’ve been a direct short between the two different legs. If the tab had been there, then I would not have had to do the pigtail, but would’ve just had to hook up one wire and then it would’ve served both the switch and the outlet.
Wow. Looks like the hot from one leg was connected to the neutral terminal of the device with the exhaust connected to neutral gave the hot/neutral reverse reading and approx 120V with the meter, and the hot from the other leg was hooked to the switch in a way that also controlled the outlet, and closing the switch connected both legs to the outlet and powered the fan as well.
Some wise words of advice from my grandfather, a lineman and master electrician for many years. "Never trust colors, trust your meter" preferably with one probe connected to a known ground, depending on the situation
That one had me stumped and scratching my head. Can't say that I've ever seen a switch/receptacle combo device wired with the switched load and receptacle on different circuits, though I have been in a small handful of homes where 20 amp circuits were used for all the receptacle outlets, and 15 amp circuits used for all the lighting outlets and smoke detector outlets, so I can see myself running into a situation like that in the future.
The most dangerous wiring problem I've seen so far, certainty debatable, in my opinion was in July 2005 when I was 15, helping my stepfather redo the electrical and plumbing in the rambler built in 1973 that he purchased earlier that year. As can be expected from a home built in that timeframe, aluminum wiring throughout, end up completely rewiring with copper because several outlets and switches were torched and the wiring was too far gone to use copper pigtails in several outlet boxes. Zinsco panel with 70 amp main in a bedroom closet. I made the discovery that the 40 gallon electric water heater was wired with 12 gauge low volt landscape lighing zip cord running almost the entire length of the home in the crawl space, so Dad brought some 10-2 NM and a disconnect switch (heater was not within sight of the breaker box) from Menard's. With the main breaker turned off to ensure my safety in the damp crawl space after seeing some horrific electrical work already, I take my diagonal cutters to cut the wires feeding the water heater, and I get a bang as loud as a shotgun and blinding flash, my face was blackened and facial hair singed. After laying in the crawlspace for a minute or so and realize I'm still alive, I pick up my diagonal cutters and the tip was completely vaporized. Come to find out the water heater circuit had been tapped off the line side of the main, you had to pull the meter if you wanted to turn off the water heater, and the lugs at the main breaker were arc welded in place, some of the breakers were welded to the bus bar as well. Changing out the panel required first cutting the service conductors out with a pair of bolt cutters as a result. How that house was still standing I have no idea.
Wow! That sounds a little more crazy/scary than the one in the video. It is surprising that the house was still standing.
In a case like this it might be helpful to have a male 120 V plug with three alligator clips on it and then with your socket tester plugged into that you can attached your clips to the bare wires going to the outlet/switch and be make it easier to figure out the power/neutral/ground wires. Once you see how they are connected in the circuit you can then wire the switch accordingly. Thanks for leaving the spark show to show how easy it is to do that (Been there done that too)
Good advice. I debated whether to leave or take out the spark incident. I decided to leave it for mostly entertainment value. The stats that I have on my video show that that is the most watched part of the entire video, so I guess a lot of people are rewinding to see it again.
Looks like the white "neutral" connected to the neutral screw was in fact the hot from the other leg and the exhaust fan provided a path to neutral to give the tester a hot-neutral reverse reading and your meter a 120V reading. The other "neutral" on top of the switch/outlet was the other hot leg powering the outlet and exhaust fan; closing the switch completed the 240V circuit to the outlet and powered the exhaust fan.
A wise word of advice. Never trust colors, trust your meter, after first checking it on a known live circuit of course.
Your evaluation of the situation is good. 👍
So I may have missed something here, but did you ever eliminate the 240 in the switchbox? Are you running everything from one of the circuits that is fed into the box or how is it now wired? It's quite common to find 2 sources in a switch box. That's not a real issue when they're both on the same phase, but when you have 240V in that same box it can get exciting very quickly. Please tell us you don't still have 240V wired into that combo switch...
No. I disconnected one of the legs and capped that off. Only one leg/phase is being used now. I ran a pigtail to supply both the switch and the receptacle.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 Good man. The next thing you can do is turn the breaker off for that circuit & see if you lose anything else. If nothing else is on it, leave the breaker off & pull the wire from it. Leave it in the panel in case something turns up without power in the future.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 Good man! I would suggest going back into the panel & removing the wire you have capped off, from the breaker unless you know it also feeds something else. leave it in the panel in case you find something without power at a later date...
I would say it's wired incorrectly at the breaker.
Actually, it was just miswired in the box where the switch and outlet were.
I once found above a drop ceiling in a basement 3 #6 bare copper wires stapled to the floor joists a couple inches apart, 2 were live, they ran to a 30A dryer outlet not in a box just screwed to stud in a wood panel wall the last 2ft of the #6 lines were taped up. And where did this guy tap into for power because this was a fuse panel? Of course the line side of the main disconnect/fuse.
Wow! I think your crazy situation beats mine. Lucky the house didn’t burn down! And no overcurrent protection to boot. I’ll say it again - just Wow!!
@@morganinspectionservices3840 I tiptoed outside to pull the meter. I still remember it was a little old lady, her son in law apparently had some wire he found in his basement, and put it in when she switched from a gas dryer to electric because the gas one made her nervous🤦
@@jpeterd92What year did his house burn down?
i wonder if the guy who did the electrical was the same as the person who put that "shelf" in. The one "L" bracket still has the sticker on it. Maybe at least try to paint the "L" brackets!
Lol
@@MikeMalizia that would be pretty ironic.
10:10 Saw that coming from two counties away, very sloppy with the test probes. It would have been a lot quicker to just disconnect everything noting where they were and test each wire, if it is hot or neutral (continuity to ground) and which circuit is it on. Test the switch for continuity, is the tab on and does it work? Your wiring diagram shows line 1 as +120 and line 2 as -120. What is -120? You should have a real electrician look at this. Never tested with the fan on either.
I could’ve been more careful. I decided to leave that in. And the funny thing is according to the stats I see, that is the most watched part of the video. So I guess at least it has some entertainment value.
I just showed +120 and -120 to show that they were separatelegs/phases. I know it’s not actually-120, but that’s how I chose to show it.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 That's true! For most people it's a rare or non-existent experience to see a dead short like that. No one gets hurt and the pop is quite startling. I'm an electrician and I watched it a few times lol. Mehdi would approve!
Given what you had, I would have pulled both switches out of the box, disconnected everything, and verified what wire is going where. The reversed colors may have been behind the other switch. It's also possible that they are backwards in the breaker panel. Either way, it may possibly have been fixed without pulling new wire. I would also have traced the circuit all the way back to the panel, box by box, if the reversal wasn't behind the other switch or in the panel.
Yes, that would’ve been the best way to handle it. As I stated in my pinned comment, my initial plan was just to make a video showing how bad the wiring was and to disconnect the second leg so that we did not have 240 V in that box. But as I got going, I wanted to try to fix it all (which I did not do.) If I had gone in initially, planning to fix it all, I definitely would’ve traced the wires and figured out exactly what was going where and coming from where.
You only need one hot wire on the right side with the tab still in place. One neutral on the lower left for the outlet. The top left will be hot when the switch is turned on for the fan.
You are very correct. The tabs were not in place, however. Also, I discovered a big problem with my final wiring job. I have described it in my pinned comment on this video. There is not a true neutral wire at all in this box, so it is not possible to properly wire the switch and the receptacle with the existing wiring.
At 1-minute in, when he sees 240v, that's where he should have stopped, flagged the outlet and taped it off so it couldn't be used, and CALL AN ELECTRICIAN!
The vast majority of "home inspectors" are simply NOT qualified to even be removing the cover plate, much less trying to troubleshoot the problem...
Well, that would have made for a very boring video, wouldn’t it? I knew there was 240 V before I did anything at all. I did not do this as a home inspector. I did this as a friend of the homeowner. She wasn’t going to do anything about it. Now she has a safer bathroom.
@@morganinspectionservices3840 I totally missed that part. I thought you (morganinspectionservices3840) were a licensed qualified electrician. That fact puts this video in a completely different light. It is nice of you to "help" the homeowner but please tell me you are recommending the homeowner call a properly certified, experienced and insured electrician to permanently sort out this mess (not just bury a hot neutral behind a wire-nut in the back of the box).
-Respectfully
Your fixing it the same method that it was wired, trial and error
No. This is not trial and error. Trial and error is just hooking things up randomly and seeing what happens. I checked voltages. I found the hot wires. I found the neutral wires. I had a pretty good idea of how screwed up the wiring was initially, and had a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to make things work. Sure, I did not trace the wires up to the attic and see where each of them ran, and which one actually went to the exhaust fan, and which ones came from the electric panel. I did assume that one wire was a neutral when it wasn’t, and had to fix that so if you wanna call that one trial and error then OK.
What ???? Am I the only one that noticed? Man you wired the outlet to use the blower fan return as a newtral. Your outlet DOESN'T HAVE A WORKING NEUTRAL. disconnect it immediately. Any device powered by this plug will force current through the fan too. If the load on the outlet is heavy the fan will also turn on. This has also rendered the earthing system of this outlet dangerous because there will be a significant potential between your persived neutral and ground. You are lucky that there is no actual neutral in that box because you absolutely cannot connect a hot and a neutral across a switch the way you attempted with the double pigtails this will cause a dead short at the switch when turned on.
Stick to your job as an inspector and hire an actual electrician to fix the issue properly. Also no comments on the way you use the testing gear to probe inside live conductive boxes. 😱
You are the winner. I realized that the neutral was not a real neutral, and have already fixed it. Was going to make an updated video. Good catch.
Most electronics like 240
Yes, most do, but I’m sure there are some that would be damaged by 240 V.
This is where a good tone tester would come into play.
Are you talking about a non-contact voltage detector or what are you referring to?
Why would they run two power cables to this electrical box?. Nothing here needs 240. Unless if the negative is cross wired/powered from another outlet. Bingo
Yes, obviously they did not need 240 in that box. I don’t know who wired that, but they obviously didn’t know what they were doing.
Everything about us electrical system is sh1t
It is definitely a mess.
How so? If I had to wager, this bathroom used to have a fan with a heating element and that heating element either needed 220v or it needed its own 120v feed. At some point, someone removed that particular fan and didn't understand that they had an extra hot and simply connected everything together. That is a quality of work issue, not a quality of design issue.
Recall that the reason the US has 120v to most household outlets is because we could afford the copper. Running at lower voltages when appropriate brings all sorts of advantages, but it requires more wiring.
@kcgunesq even easier and more importantly safer to run things at lower voltages using isolating transformers.