I have A Red, Black and white with ground wire coming out of the house... Then the wires I need to hook up are White, Black and Copper... What would the red wire be coming from the house?? It says it is hot but I always thought the black one was hot. I was wondering how I would hook it up? Thank you for any help you can give me...

Ewaltz,

Red, black, white and ground means you have two hot wires both red and black. This either means you are dealing with a multi-wire circuit or a dedicated 120/240V circuit running to an appliance. That wire is capable of producing 240 Volts as opposed to the 120V that most home electronics work with. Basically that means it is potently twice as dangerous and if you hook something up wrong there is the potential to send 240V to your 120V appliances thus frying them!

When you flip the breaker for that wire what turns off (maybe the Kitchen counter)? Also I am hoping you have to flip a double pole breaker (one that looks like two breakers connected)? If you are only flipping one than chances are you are leaving one of those wires hot when you are doing work which is very dangerous and potentially deadly.

You need to know this and you need to be very careful (and know what your doing) for this kind of installation. Do you have a wire tester? I need more info before I would even tell you how to do this. Sorry but I don't want to see you die and you don't seem to know what your doing.

Need more info, where in the house and all the questions asked above.

That being said I am not an expert and this is not my profession (I am just a do it your self-er who has done his homework)

More of an explanation... In my hallway I have one light at the end of the hallway and we are wanting to add another light at the other end.. We are hooking into the light switch and putting the wire to the ceiling... Then hooking a light to that. We have the correct wire that the hardware store told us to get. But in taking out the switch we looked at the wires and it through us off by seeing the RED one... Since we have black and white and negative wire (on the new wire we purchased) I have done this before in the house we lived in before but their was not a RED wire... The red wire reads that it is hot but so does the black one? We have a tester so we did do that we just are not for sure what to hook it up to since the one is Red... I think this helps explain or maybe just make it worse... I was just wondering if we could find out what the Red wire should be hooked to? If anything I guess I should call and have someone else do it... I just didn't want to wait since Christmas is coming and I would like my hallway to be done for the holidays... But then again I would like to make it to the holidays also... :) If this helps you let me know what you think.. Thanks for your advice... E:)

Are you turning off the power at the breaker when you are working? If not stop right there and call someone who knows what they are doing.

Do you have a voltage tester (what kind of tester) if you touch one contact to the red wire and one to black does it read 240V? Also, was the red wire hooked to anything before you removed the old switch?

Normally you would just hook the incoming black wire to one end of the switch (the bottom one or one that reads “line”) and the outgoing black wire to the top. Than pigtail the neutral (white) and the ground (bare) wires together. But you should cap off the red wire very, very well, if you don’t have a wire nut then go get one and after you cap it put lots of electrical tape around it so that it cannot make contact with anything! Better yet if possible leave the red wire uncut if it is not already cut.

If something goes wrong and black connects to red you will have 240V going through that circuit. You can wire the light if you want but I seems if you don’t already know this maybe you should just leave it alone. There could be other things going on with that wire that you don’t know about.

Please look at the working switch. On the lever, are there ON/Off indicators on the handle.

More than likely, you are looking at a three way switch. Normally, this type of switch is fed by the White wire the output of the switch is sent to two travelers (red and black) One feeds a second switch and the other feeds the light.

With the switch in the off position, there should 120 VAC on the white conductor when measured against either the black or red conductors.

With the switch in the on position, there would be no voltage difference between the white or black or red.

I suggest you invest in some basic wiring books and a multi meter.

Read the books first and gain an understanding of what you have and what you want to have before sticking your hands on anything electrical. Also make sure you power off the circuit.

Don,

Yeah thought it could be a three way swich too. But like I said could be multi-wire, which would make it more dangerous. That is why I was looking for a voltage reading.

A switch does not have a "Neutral" conductor.

It deals only in Hot conductors.


You normally find White as the feed from the supply and either Black or RFed as the return to the fixture.