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Outtaluck

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I'm a DIY kind of guy, and was never really fond of household 120V/240V power before, until I had a friend who used to be a journeyman help me understand enough to wire up my house we are completely renovating.

So, after putting some walls and trusses in place, and running conduit all day yesterday, putting the wires inside it, it was time to hook everything back up, 20-something circuits across 2 breaker boxes. All 120V lines are 20A with all relevant devices listed at 20A.

Everything went well, minus some flashlight time and pulled muscles. Until I got to that blasted last circuit. The particular circuit has 4 motion sensor flood lights on it, everything wired in parallel. The way I wired it was what I am told commercial standards are, create basically a horizontal line and drop a seperate wire to each load.

So, tired, I was hooking everything up, and had everything clear, so I thought. Hooking up the ground, it slipped out of the bar and flipped into the main power bus. A little sparking, and I had a 12/2 wire getting fed 200A with zero protection. I learned very quickly the knee jerk of grabbing the wire to pull it off (maybe 1/2 second connected) will create a flesh searing effect rivaling a hot outdoor grill, and the proper idea was to flip the main breaker and walk away.

Once it cooled, I found out the neutral was touching the ground bus, creating the path for the short circuit, but that probably saved me. I cut off the burned sections I could see, finished it, and when I flipped the breaker, now I have a dead short in the circuit. My question is whether or not I should even bother troubleshooting to see how far the damage went, or is everything (the 4 motion floods) likely cooked?

The rest is a basically for laughs and a good reason to not listen to friends who say, "it's just 120V, you don't have to remove the power to install the breaker" and should have listened to my own advice of, "You can be too safe all your life, you'll only be unsafe enough once."
 
Well, flipped the breaker this morning, everything is now working properly. Not exactly sure why it would trip as a short last night, and why this morning it went back to working normally. To me, means something is still definitely off, just is an intermittent problem now. Circuit isn't that complicated, so should be able to find something, hopefully.
 
Yeah, but that's more of a just pay someone type thing. Issue is, I'm doing everything myself on this house, and understanding electricity is something I want to do. As far as 12VDC, I know my way around fixing that and different issues, relating to vehicles. But, 120/240VAC, it follows the same idea, but more to think about. It's not rocket science, but more of gaining understanding of what I'm dealing with. Once I have the understanding of what it's doing and how it behaves, I can figure out the rest.

It's just learning it, and finding the right people who have the the same curiosity, who did figure it out. The #1 pet peeve I have is, "call someone else and let them do it." I was brought up like that, always let the professionals handle it. Well, if the professionals can handle it, that's absolutely great, and they also put their pants on one leg at a time, just like me. That means I can do it. Maybe not with the dexterity and understanding, but I function well learning the how and why, I can figure out the rest. There's something to be said when you build it/do it/design it yourself. A sense of pride. So, although I made a mishap, which, mainly happened because I was tired/fatigued, and still had the power going through the main lugs, which is fairly common with what I was doing, it presents me with something new.

On DC, all the electronics turn off or are isolated when you start a car, because when the starter lets off from turning, the power in the system dissipates throughout the system. Inherently bad for sensitive electronics in a vehicle. So, I am trying to figure out what the power did. If it dissipated through, then would it have fried everything? Or, would it have stayed on the path of least resistance to ground? Now, I have an added misnomer. When I took off the burned parts, and got the breaker installed, it tripped instantly. Okay, so something burned up, assumingly. But, after a few hours, working correctly. Sooo, what is happening there? Is there a heat issue that is now creating a short, as in a vehicle? If so, how do you find it with AC in a household environment? Vehicles is a lot easier. Or, could it be something else? Maybe something in the electronic photocell circuit? If it is, what could handle that power as to sustain that through a 20A circuit breaker? The entire wiring on this circuit is accessible at this time, so it's perfect for me to troubleshoot and learn about what exactly happened. But, I need someone to bounce ideas off of, but has been unfruitful here so far. So, I'll continue delving into it, and figure out what happened in the aftermath of this, to learn from… that way, the next short circuit I run into, I have a better and greater understanding as to where to look. Seeing as I do a fairly mundane blue collar job unrelated to this, and have also decided to start learning microcontroller programming, this seems exceedingly helpful to learn.

So yes, I could just go call a professional. But since I've wired up half of my house following the NEC, and other relevant codes for the rest of my renovation, just calling someone in to check something when I can spend some time learning it and be better of when something tricky happens… just seems… like I'm bailing out. I just don't do that. I'm a self sufficient kind of guy, and maybe I don't have professional training in it, never stopped me before. Besides, the professionals I did have out for plumbing, before I started getting into it, screwed half of it up, caused me unnecessary work, and I still had to go back in behind them to fix what was done incorrectly, which almost flooded my place. Am I a licensed plumber? Nope, but I did read and understand that code enough to learn what the slope was supposed to be… which, the uphill option the professionals used wasn't one in the check mark column.

I know I don't know a whole heck of a lot, but trying to learn the understanding, which is what I posted this thread for. So, I'll continue searching it out without the professionals, and find some help from someone who has the curiosity that I have about understanding, who enjoys it, willing to answer some questions, and go from there.
 
I have found in the past that PIR's and control box's do tend to get their brief's in a twist occasionally, once re-set by disconnecting and leaving for a while they seem to sort themselves out, it's generally a condenser in the control box that will stayed charged until the power is turned off, that is what I have found can't say it's gospel or may be your problem, but thought it may help.
 
I'm a DIY kind of guy, and was never really fond of household 120V/240V power before, until I had a friend who used to be a journeyman help me understand enough to wire up my house we are completely renovating.

So, after putting some walls and trusses in place, and running conduit all day yesterday, putting the wires inside it, it was time to hook everything back up, 20-something circuits across 2 breaker boxes. All 120V lines are 20A with all relevant devices listed at 20A.

Everything went well, minus some flashlight time and pulled muscles. Until I got to that blasted last circuit. The particular circuit has 4 motion sensor flood lights on it, everything wired in parallel. The way I wired it was what I am told commercial standards are, create basically a horizontal line and drop a seperate wire to each load.

So, tired, I was hooking everything up, and had everything clear, so I thought. Hooking up the ground, it slipped out of the bar and flipped into the main power bus. A little sparking, and I had a 12/2 wire getting fed 200A with zero protection. I learned very quickly the knee jerk of grabbing the wire to pull it off (maybe 1/2 second connected) will create a flesh searing effect rivaling a hot outdoor grill, and the proper idea was to flip the main breaker and walk away.

Once it cooled, I found out the neutral was touching the ground bus, creating the path for the short circuit, but that probably saved me. I cut off the burned sections I could see, finished it, and when I flipped the breaker, now I have a dead short in the circuit. My question is whether or not I should even bother troubleshooting to see how far the damage went, or is everything (the 4 motion floods) likely cooked?

The rest is a basically for laughs and a good reason to not listen to friends who say, "it's just 120V, you don't have to remove the power to install the breaker" and should have listened to my own advice of, "You can be too safe all your life, you'll only be unsafe enough once."
Well my friend we meet again. My advice is to replace that wiring or singles going to the first light. I wouldn’t think that since it’s the ground which just hooks to the fixture body and box if metal so you might have got lucky this time. Do you have metal studs or wood studs that you built your house with ? Just wondering why y’all ran pipe instead of romex. You did not put 200 amps on that ground wire just 120vac which if it was on there for that long, I would have thought that the 200 main breaker would have tripped. Inside that pipe when that happened it probably melted the wires together just replace the home run wiring to the first fixture and check the wiring going to the second light and see if it got damaged. Worst case you would have to repull all the security light wiring. Let this be a valuable lesson that 120vac can kill as easy. You friend is just learning since he is a journeyman not a licensed electrician. He’s got cocky playing with 120vac live and it’s going to bite him in the butt. Good luck my friend and let us know if we can be of further help
 
It's 12/2 romex. The breaker boxes are in a garage mounted to an unstudded cinder block wall. I don't plan on studding it, so having 40 circuits or more running through, I thought conduit to the first wall would work better and clean it up. This particular circuit is a temporary circuit wire installing the rest, so wasn't in conduit until today. The end result was the neutral and ground hooked together at first junction. It melted the wire nut down and insulation between the 2 wires. Replaced the run from the breaker box and the wires connected at the junction to 1st light and the supply line to the 2nd light. No others showed any signs I could tell of heat. Don't know why it decided to work fine after 6-7hrs of no power, but can only guess this cooling allowed for some space around it and act as an insulator, like the older aluminum wire used in the 70's and such, or maybe I moved it slightly. Either way, replaced it.

Done with this forum anyway, like I said, I'll look elsewhere for people more in tune with what I'm looking for, rather than whatever this forum is.

Mod's - tried deleting this account, now the coding won't allow me. Please remove this account
 
It's 12/2 romex. The breaker boxes are in a garage mounted to an unstudded cinder block wall. I don't plan on studding it, so having 40 circuits or more running through, I thought conduit to the first wall would work better and clean it up. This particular circuit is a temporary circuit wire installing the rest, so wasn't in conduit until today. The end result was the neutral and ground hooked together at first junction. It melted the wire nut down and insulation between the 2 wires. Replaced the run from the breaker box and the wires connected at the junction to 1st light and the supply line to the 2nd light. No others showed any signs I could tell of heat. Don't know why it decided to work fine after 6-7hrs of no power, but can only guess this cooling allowed for some space around it and act as an insulator, like the older aluminum wire used in the 70's and such, or maybe I moved it slightly. Either way, replaced it.

Done with this forum anyway, like I said, I'll look elsewhere for people more in tune with what I'm looking for, rather than whatever this forum is.

Mod's - tried deleting this account, now the coding won't allow me. Please remove this account
My friend this is a great forum for you to get advice from and I’m sorry about yesterday but you will do I guess. I’m going to tell you that there is an American advice forum but if you honestly think this is not a good forum go there and I bet you wouldn’t make it a day with those guys it is TERRIBLE and they will make fun of you and they all seem like they know each other and they will slam you and you will regret it. There is no hard feelings but I’m sorry you feel this way and good luck. Forget about yesterday and I honestly tried to help you today. Again no hard feelings on my part
 
No one has tried to delete your account, if a staff member wanted to do so it would have happened. I deleted some of the early posts which weren't helpful to your query.
 

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