Snoonyb

The point of my previous responses to you was to urge you to obtain V.O.M.
If you have not elected to take that advice, you will continue along the failed efforts you are now engaged in.
Because a continuity test is one of procedures you engage in to eliminate the cause of failures.
OBTAIN A VOM!

__________________
Illigitimas non-carborundum

JoeD

It should be black and white nutted together and a black and white going to the fixture for a switch loop.

nealtw

Yes; Joe is right about the loop
The other questions are , are there any red wires anywhere in this system? and if you have power at the light box, does it go away when the switch is turned off. And how meny switches are in the switch box?

zepper

nealtw > If the power goes to the light first there will be two sets of wires, 2 blacks nuted together one white to the light and the other white to the light. So power comes in on one wire goes to the switch and back to the light so you have black and white to the switch. If power is going to the switch first, you have two blacks to the switch and the whites are nuted together and the light has a black and a white connected to it...

6 wires come into the switch box: one white and one black for each of the three switches. None of them are nutted or connected to anything else.

At the light box, there's one white and one black lead. There are also two other black wires in the back that are nutted; I didn't use them because the fixture I replaced wasn't using them.

Snoonyb > The point of my previous responses to you was to urge you to obtain V.O.M. ... If you have not elected to take that advice, you will continue along the failed efforts you are now engaged in... Because a continuity test is one of procedures you engage in to eliminate the cause of failures... OBTAIN A VOM!

Sure, I'll be glad to, and I'll post the results here. Your next-to-last post confused me, is all. You seemed to be faulting the fixture no matter what—and I'd already tried it elsewhere and found it OK.

nealtw > ...Are there any red wires anywhere in this system? and if you have power at the light box, does it go away when the switch is turned off. And how many switches are in the switch box?

No red wires anywhere... Yes, I can switch the power at the light box on and off... There are 3 switches in the light box:

_ Two 2-pole rockers

_ A CFL-compatible dimmer (for our living room). As it has a ground terminal too, I've connected that to the box's ground screw (which is connected to an uninsulated ground wire). BTW, I did try removing this dimmer but it didn't help.

Thanks for your ongoing help w/this. BTW here in the 'burbs this qualifies as real excitement. :?)

nealtw

Hey Joe: I guess I'm not the only one that screws up that black and white in the switch loop. The only thing I can come up with is a broken wire leading to the switch and may still have intermetten connection. I would do a close inspection of those wires near where they are clamped in the back of the box. AL. dosn't like being handled to much and that is where the trouble started. You may be able to loosen the clamp and pull a few inches more.

nealtw

Zepper: what have you found?

zepper

Hi guys,

My friend the (real) electrician was here today. Turned out we had a melted connection under the sink at the junction box for the dishwasher and garburator, and for some reason the breaker hadn't blown. This caused a voltage leak that played major weirdness with other circuits as well. (For example, the mysterious porch light box was getting only 75v.)

Everything's fixed now, and I'll be replacing our entire set of breakers. My friend said our old Westinghouse breakers aren't made anymore because they were so unreliable.

Thanks for your theories and input. Cheers, Z.

nealtw

This is a good write up about AL. wiring

http://www.halifax.ca/Fire/AluminumCopperWireBasics.html

AlwaysOneMoreProject

So how did you fudge the voltage test that you claimed was good?