So I bought a house built in 1957. And all of a sudden after plugging a laptop into a bedroom on the other side of the house, all the overhead fixtures on the opposite side of the house stopped working.
So I went out and bought a new overhead took the old one down and was left with a mount which had a black wire and a white wire.
I figured it would be easy, I went out and bought a new fixture and hey! All I had was a black wire and a white wire. So I put them together and nothing happened.
I'll note that I used an electrical tester on both the switch which had roughly 110 going to it, turned it off tested the fixture had nothing going to it, turned it back on tested the fixture and there was the right amount of power there.
So I thought perhaps there was a ground wire I had missed or maybe the connections weren't tight or what have you and would I still couldn't get it to work.
But then accidentally I touched the white wire to the metal of the mount, one of the screws as a matter of fact and now it works perfectly.
This can't possibly be safe can it? The new fixture had a skinny copper ground while the old fixture had no ground wire coming from the ceiling nevertheless I hooked up the ground but with that hooked up it still didn't work.
So for my lite fixture to work I need to have black to black, white to metal mounting bracket and copper ground to wherever. Why is this happening? Is it going to burn my house down? What's the deal? Please and thank you
Best Answer
The fixture needs black to black, white to white and ground to the mount or electrical box. If this doesn't work, then you have an open neutral somewhere in the line and you need to find out where it is. You'll have to check everything on the circuit to determine where the open neutral is. Do not keep the white wire connected to the mounting bracket (which is probably grounded),because you're completing the circuit through the ground path, This is dangerous, it could kill you.