A friend of mine took down a ceiling fan to put up a light fixture. He was unable to get the light to work so he asked me to take a look. There is a 12/2 cable and a 12/3 cable coming into the junction box in the ceiling. I tested all of the wires, and there does not seem to be a neutral wire present. I took a pigtail light and touched it to all of the possible wire combinations and cannot get it to light up. If I touch one of the pigtail wires to a ground wire and then touch the other wires, all of them are carrying enough power to make the light work. I tested all of these wires with my multimeter and the black and the white in the 12/2 cable carry 120 volts, and in the 12/3 cable a white and a black one carry 120 volts and the red carries approximately 68 volts.
What could be going on here? I'm an experienced electrician and this doesn't make any sense to me.
Additional information: There are 3 different ceiling lights total on this switch circuit. There are 2 3-way switches and 1-4 way switches. I tested the switches and they all seem to function just fine. My friend said he did not mess with the other 2 lights or any of the 3 switches. Flipping the switches doesn't change the voltage at the ceiling box. He said the ceiling fan worked fine before he took it down.
Best Answer
There was no neutral path present at the junction box in the ceiling. I went over all 3 switch boxes and the other 2 ceiling light junction boxes in this lighting circuit and was never able to determine the source of the trouble. I wound up pulling a new cable (always-hot, neutral, and ground) to power the circuit and supply a neutral path.
Additionally, there were 3 extra wires in the junction box in the picture that did not serve any purpose for the lighting circuit (both the black and white in the 12/2 cable and the red wire in the 12/3 cable). I capped those off and tucked them up into the junction box.
There appears to have been a lot of DIY wiring done in this home over the years leading to very irregular wiring. This made troubleshooting the issue challenging.