Ok basically I am doing some construction in the basement and I am putting lights in a closet I am building and so I got them all hooked up and I had the lights on when I first switched on the breaker everything seemed fine. But to my dismay when I switched off these lights the breaker popped. I thought that maybe I was overloading the breaker(I had multiple things on there so I ran an extra wire and installed a new breaker just for these lights but still to no avail it still pops.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Originally Posted by elvinhaf

Ok basically I am doing some construction in the basement and I am putting lights in a closet I am building and so I got them all hooked up and I had the lights on when I first switched on the breaker everything seemed fine. But to my dismay when I switched off these lights the breaker popped. I thought that maybe I was overloading the breaker(I had multiple things on there so I ran an extra wire and installed a new breaker just for these lights but still to no avail it still pops.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

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So you know I have three little halogen lamps in a row. I now have tried wiring it a bit different no popping but the lights are dim.
Basically, I tried to make one big loop connecting the (black) to the black on the first light then from the white on the light I connected it to the black on the second and so on then I just made one white going back to the box and the grounds I connected all together.

I don't know if this made much sense but hopefully it did not sure what I should do I was kind of thinking this might happen.

Again any help would be greatly appreciated

Opening a contact(turning off a switch) doesn't normally draw more power, I would think switch may be upside down, and a short on the light wires, Separate at different points(between switch and first light, first and second light.
Also remove switch and see how it works outside of the box, any internal short to ground may be present and could become live when turning off, Not likely but possible since it shorts when turning off.

I figured it out I didn't know that you needed to not have the nutrile wire to pass the switch so it is pass and it is working...


Thanks for the help

I'm not sure what you did. I hope you didn't do what you said you did.
In the switch box, the two white wires should be connected together with a wire nut. The two blacks should be connected to the switch.

In the first two light boxes, the two blacks should be connected together with the black of the light. The two whites should be connected together with the white of the light. In the last light box, the black should be connected to the black of the light and the white should be connected with the white of the light.

Sound like He was switching hot to the neutral.