Thomas A. Edison was noted for getting lost on the walk home from work. The problem was, his home was practically across the street from his research lab in West Orange, N.J.
This modern Moses of electronics may have led the way to the promised land of convenience, but he left behind alleyways of confusion in which to get sidetracked. Take the light bulb, for example. To install one in the ceiling of the new baby’s room can be one of the most daunting tasks a new father or mother faces in the life of their child.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, pull the plate off the electrical circuit box in the utility room. What do you see? An incomprehensible tangle of amps, volts and watts. Plus a whole lot of wires. Thank Al Edison. If he’d invented something more practical, like the “Star Wars” light sword or the “Star Trek” phaser, we wouldn’t be stuck today with a mess of re-volting wires.
But we are, so here are a few tips on how to hot-wire the new baby.
First, decide where the new light fixture will go in the ceiling. Find a spot between two rafters or joists so the new electrical box can be recessed, cut the hole the exact size of the ceiling box and insert the box into the neat hole so the edges are flush with the ceiling. Attach to a rafter or joist using whatever gizmo that particular box provides.
Now for the fun part. Up in the attic or under the floor, as the case may be, find another electrical wire to tap into. Cut into the line in a place where a new junction box can be firmly attached to wood, concrete or metal. Did we mention that you should turn off the power first? Attach the new box and insert the wire ends through the holes in the back, which on modern plastic boxes are tabs that you have to punch out with a screwdriver.
Run some new wire from the ceiling box to the junction box and leave 6 to 8 inches sticking out of each box. The wire should be the same size as the wire that’s already in the line, usually 12- or 14-gauge for home wiring.
Modern electrical wire, commonly known as Romex after the brand name, comes in more stripes than a zebra, but for general home use, 12-2 or 14-2 with ground is the right stuff. That’s 12- or 14-gauge, referring to the size of the copper wire, with a black lead and a white lead, plus an unsheathed copper ground wire in the middle.
All this is ensconced in a tight plastic casing to make it hard for anyone who aspires to separate the individual wires. But that you must do, exposing white, black and copper wires. Strip about an inch of plastic sheathing off the white wire and attach it to the white wire on the light fixture, the black to the black and the green to the ground.
Inside the junction box, strip about an inch of plastic covering off each wire, twist the black leads together with needle-nose pliers, then the white and copper leads, twisting in a clockwise direction. Clip off about three-eighths of an inch off the twisted wire and connect with plastic wire nuts, again twisting in a clockwise direction.
You can get creative and twist the wires counterclockwise, but the subsequent owners will hate you and pass bad karma on to your child. Remember to use green wire nuts for the ground.
Turn the electricity back on, and baby will have light. What, you want to shut it off? That requires more work.
Cut a hole in the wall next to the door for a switch box and run a lead of the same type of wire from the switch box to the light fixture. This may necessitate some serious acrobatics in the attic, or you may have to cut out some wallboard to get the job done.
Always attach the black-sheathed copper wire to the brass connectors and the white to the chrome connectors on switches or electrical outlets. Do this or future generations will curse you.
Now comes the tricky part. With the wires properly attached to the single-pole light switch (three-way light switches are for two switches controlling the same light from different ends of the room), attach the white wires in the junction box from the incoming power wire, the light fixture wire and the outgoing wire together, but not the white wire from the switch. Put some black tape on it, because it’s a “hot” wire.
Remember, black is hot, white is not.
Connect the black wire from the switch to the black wire from the lighting fixture, and the taped white wire from the switch to the other two black wires. Be sure to put some black tape on the white wire in the switch box as a warning that it’s being used as a hot wire.
Before pushing all those wires back into the boxes and screwing the ceiling fixture down tight, try it out first. About the worst that can happen is that it will pop a breaker switch. If that happens, backtrack and make sure all the white wires are bundled together in the junction box, the black wire from the switch goes directly to the light fixture, and the taped white wire from the switch is entwined with the incoming and outgoing power wires.
If all this is still too confusing, Tooling University at www.toolingu.com offers courses in electron transfer, valence shells and universal truths such as that one watt equals one amp times one volt.
Jim Kjeldsen is a former assistant news editor at The Herald who now owns and operates La Conner Hardware Store in La Conner.
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