I moved in to a new apartment a couple months ago and noticed one of the LED light fixtures never really turned off, there was always a faint glow from it. Today I went to install some smart dimmers inside the fixtures to connect the to my Philips Hue lighting system. Unfortunately I dont have access to the load centers, so I had to just shut off the light fixture at the switch, work carefully and hope for the best. Before running some additional wire in to the fixtures to acommodate the dimmers, I decided to hook up a multimeter and see what was going on since the light never really turned off. To my surprise I read that the hot to neutral voltage was 65 volts, and the neutral to ground voltage was 124 when the circuit was supposedly off! What is going on here?
How it was wired, ground was never connected:
Hot to neutral reading 65 volts with the switch off
Neutral to ground reading 124 volts with the switch off
Best Answer
You used a high-impedance digital voltmeter (DVM), which can pick up induced or capacitively coupled current from nearby wiring. Put a resistor, perhaps 470 kilohms or 1 megohm, across the leads, to effectively "short out" the very low coupled voltage.