Neutral hot, black not


  #1  
Old 11-05-17, 08:04 AM
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Neutral hot, black not

Hello,

We are doing some work on our pantry and I ran across a little electrical issue. The two lights in our pantry were connected to the attached switch, which is one where if the door is open, the lights stay on. When the door closes, it pushes the button in and the lights turn off. This was connected to one 14-gauge wire. We took this switch out and want to put in a regular switch. When I hooked up the new switch, it turns out the neutral is hot and the black wire is not. I'm not sure what's causing that and if I should connect the neutral wire to the light switch where I would normally connect the black or is this a bigger issue I need to have an electrician look at? I figure it's probably never good to have the neutra hot but maybe it's OK in this case?

Thanks!
 
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  #2  
Old 11-05-17, 08:06 AM
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It's a switch loop, so neutral(white) is not really neutral. The wire is hot coming into the switch and hot going out. Mark the white as black with a piece of tape.
 
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Old 11-05-17, 08:08 AM
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The neutral is not hot. The white wire is hot. You are working with a two wire switch loop. Hot comes to the switch on white and returns to the light..... switched..... on black.

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Old 11-05-17, 08:09 AM
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Thanks. So I need to connect both the white and black wires to the switch and mark the white as being hot, correct?
 
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Old 11-05-17, 08:40 AM
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Correct. The white is the hot feeding the switch. The black is the switched hot.
 
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Old 11-05-17, 08:51 AM
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Thanks! You guys are the best!
 
 

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