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I plugged in an outlet tester to an outlet directly below two light switches and it read "open neutral", so we pulled out the two individual light switches above and found a blue box with four 3-wire cables coming in (black, white, ground). All white wires were joined together with a wire nut. Each switch had only black hot wire attached and a hot wire jumped from each other in the middle.

We rewired the switches to what we believed to be proper (1 ground with 2 neutral on same side and 2 hot on opposite side).

We turned the breaker back on and it was working what seemed to be sort of functional, then turned one of the switches OFF and it made the dull electrical sound then tripped the breaker.

isherwood
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ralph
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    Neutrals do not go to the switch. ONLY HOT GOES IN AND COMES OUT SWITCHED – Traveler Mar 04 '24 at 00:23
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    On the other hand the outlet need neural on one side and hot on the other side – Traveler Mar 04 '24 at 01:30
  • Since you don't mention any red wires, you don't have /3 NM cable ("romex") you have /2 with ground. And you apprently need to learn a lot more about house wiring. Neutrals don't go to (normal, dumb) switches. – Ecnerwal Mar 04 '24 at 13:36
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    Please call an electrician before you electrocute yourself or start a fire! – DJ. Mar 04 '24 at 18:14

1 Answers1

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ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE with a mess of old wiring. But what I suspect you had was:

  • All whites were neutrals and all connected together, which is generally correct.
  • Ground (bare) wires connected to each other and to various devices as appropriate.
  • Black hot and/or switched hot wires, and possibly red wires as well (depending on whether the "3 wire Romex" meant black/red/white + bare ground (the usual meaning of "3 wire Romex") or black/white/bare ground (three physical wires in each cable, including ground) connected to various switches and receptacles.

The result of all that is indeed that the receptacle did not have neutral - i.e., "open neutral". If that's the case then all you needed to do was to connect neutral of the receptacle to the bundle of white neutral wires. But that is only a guess at the moment.

Ordinary (not: smart, WiFi, motion sensor, timer, etc.) switches do NOT use neutral. They might connect to a white wire, depending on configuration (old switch loops, some 3-way switches). So connecting white to the switches was a bad move, and at some point you ended up with a short circuit. Fortunately, your breaker works!

If you have "before" pictures then upload them. It may be possible to figure this out relatively easily. If you don't have those pictures then this is going to be a slow process of identifying:

  • Which cable is bringing in power from the panel
  • Which cable(s), if any, is going to feed other things
  • Which cables connect to switched devices (lights, fans, etc.)
  • Which cable is going to the "open neutral" receptacle

Note also that the 3-light testers are what Harper calls the Magic 8-Ball. Because it gives a seemingly mysterious answer that may or may not have anything to do with reality. They are actually quite simple devices that work reasonably well with modern wiring. But when there are strange problems you can get strange results. The truth is that "open neutral" tells us that:

  • There is no current flowing between hot and neutral
  • There is current flowing between hot and ground
  • There is no current flowing between ground and neutral

That can mean the neutral wire is not connected. It can also mean some other things. With messed up wiring it takes a little digging sometimes to figure out what is really going on.

A non-contact voltage tester and a multimeter are very useful tools here. A 3-light receptacle tester only tests receptacles and in a very limited way.

manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
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