I live in a 12 year old house and yesterday I took down our front porch lights (2 on each side of the front door) to paint them. I turned off the breaker during this process, painted the lights, put them back up and went to turn on the breaker. I switched it over and noticed that it would go to the on position and then move back to the middle. It wouldn't "click" back, just wouldn't stay in the on position.

I took the lights down this morning to confirm I didn't do something in there that would cause a problem and everything was fine. I disconnected the lights and went back to flip the breaker to see if it would work and I got the same result. The lights have been working without tripping at all. So I am curious, could this be that the breaker has gone bad (whcih I have read is rare). It is a single pole 15 amp breaker with 3 front porch lights and 3 lights inside the house (by the front door) connected to it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Yes sounds as if the breaker is defective. This happens more than you think, as breakers should be exercised annually at least.

Be sure to shut off the Main Breaker if you decide to change the breaker yourself, and keep in mind the large wires that feed the main, if located in the same panel as the defective breaker, are still very much live.

More than likely you have miswired the switch loop.

When you reconnected the wiring, did you connect all of the whites together? If so, then that may well be your error.

The way a switch loop is constructed is to use a white conductor to carry power to the switch and the black to return from the switch.

So what you would find is one of the lights (closest to the switch) will have a black supply line coming in. This is the line that you connect the white to the switch to. Also, mark the white conductor with black tape or use a black sharpie (actually any color except green, white or gray) so that you know this is a hot conductor.

What I suspect is that you have inadvertently wired a hot wire to the neural and when the switch is flipped you immediately ground out the circuit. Or if the switch is left in the on position, it will do the same thing.

Thanks for the replies.

Coming out of the brick (of course in a metal box) is a black, white and copper. I attached the white from the light to white from the wall, black to black and green to copper.

Are you saying this may not be correct? Or are you assuming there are other white wires that may have been in the equation?

Seemed straight forward but maybe I missed something there. Thanks again.

Dom must have misread your question, all you did was shut off a breaker, take two lights down, paint, put two lights back the way you found them and now the breaker will not close.

Change the breaker.

Actually, Don did not misread the question.

What I read was that the breaker was turned off and the lamps removed, painted and reinstalled.

Now there appears to be a fault that opens the breaker as soon as it sees power to the circuit.

My logic says (impure and faulty as it is) that since there was no work done at the breaker, other than opening it, the more probable area would be at the lamp end of the circuit where wires were disconnected and then reattached.

That's why I would start there. However, I do not dispute the possibility of the breaker failing I just believe that the other ends of the circuit must be verified.

Toward that end, just disconnect the lamps. If the breaker fails, then it may well be bad. However, if it does not fail then reconnect one lamp at a time and see which lamp generates the failure.

The breaker was only touched twice at the start of this problem. Once to open it and then again to re-energize the circuit.

What the poster is seeing is more like a fault than a bad breaker. At least in my humble opinion

The breaker was defective... thanks for the replies