View Full Version : Wiring three pendant lights
bake0296
Mar 30, 2009, 09:42 PM
I am trying to wire in three pendant light fixtures into our new home above the breakfast bar. There are three junction boxes already wired in when we bought the house, but no lights. In the first two boxes there are two sets of wires coming out two black gromets. In each set of wires there is a white, red, black, and copper ground. In the last boxes there is only one set of these wires, white, red, black, and copper. Each pendant has a transformer with red coming from the socket into the tranformer, then a green, white, and black coming out. Using a wire tester, I have found the black and red in the socket are HOT, the white is nuetral, and coppoer is obvious. The directions with the lights tell me to white to nuetral (did that), Black to HOT (went black to black), then green to ground per the electrical specs. I had two grounds so I wired all three (copper, copper, green) togther. The red I capped and taped unused. Result, light does not come on.
Any advice would be great...
stanfortyman
Mar 31, 2009, 03:52 AM
Why did you unwire the fixture red? Or was it not originally wired from the transformer to the socket? That would be very weird.
With a new fixture all you have to do is wire the 120v side. Typically white, black and ground.
bake0296
Mar 31, 2009, 06:39 AM
Ok, I knew I would say it wrong originally... So, in double checking this, where I said socket I should have said fixture. From the fixture itself, a red wire goes into the transformer, from the transformer come out a black, white, and green. Where I get confused is that there are two sets (4 + 4) of the same wires coming out of the socket that I only have three wires from the transformer to hook up to (i.e. the black, white, green) to the two sets of black, white, copper, and red. One thing I did notice was that whoever lived here before had one of the copper wires connected to a screw on the box, the other copper looks as if it was wired to the fixture ground. The new fixture came with a mounting plate that has a green screw, should I use this to ground each light individually, or do I need to keep them grounded with the copper wire that leads to the next box?