Help with Outside Garage Lighting

[Afrowookie]

You may be right, but I don't think so since the garage only has two switches. But I will check tomorrow any how to confirm.

 

[nealtw]

You may be right, but I don't think so since the garage only has two switches. But I will check tomorrow any how to confirm.

Back door of house?

 

[Afrowookie]

I have a back door that goes to the back deck. It has a switch for the deck floodlights and also turns on/off a GFCI Receptacles. This one is closer to the garage.

I also have a back door to go to back yard. It has 3 switches. 1) Basement light, 2) the landing light where the door is, and 3) back door flood light

 

[nealtw]

I don't think you found that red wire in the garage so it goes somewhere.
I could see that maybe some one set up so the lights could be turned off at front and back doors. It would make sense that you may want to turn off the lights at the front door when company leaves or when you come home from work and come in the back door.
So I would be opening up anything back there. Most likely would be on the same circuit.

 

[Afrowookie]

I see your logic in using the back doors, but this is not the case for my house. If you seen the layout of my property you would also agree that the only logical and most convenient way to enter/exit the house is via front door.

Also all other light switches near the back doors as well as the switch in the garage all operate separate flood lights, to me it makes no sense that if I wanted my garage lights on to light up the driveway I would have to have a floodlight on as well that would light up some part of the rear of the house.

I only want the front of the garage/driveway lit up, and not anywhere at the back of the house. The way the switches you mentioned that may be a 3 way switch are all wired

 

[Snoonyb]

AGAIN! See post #131.

 

[nealtw]

I see your logic in using the back doors, but this is not the case for my house. If you seen the layout of my property you would also agree that the only logical and most convenient way to enter/exit the house is via front door.

Also all other light switches near the back doors as well as the switch in the garage all operate separate flood lights, to me it makes no sense that if I wanted my garage lights on to light up the driveway I would have to have a floodlight on as well that would light up some part of the rear of the house.

I only want the front of the garage/driveway lit up, and not anywhere at the back of the house. The way the switches you mentioned that may be a 3 way switch are all wired

We don't care, we just want to find the wire.

 

[bud16415]

Afrowookie


I haven’t been following your thread and I remember reading your first post and how nice it was you had a clear concise explanation of your problem and had already answered all the normal questions I would have asked. Here we are 17 pages later and still no resolution to your problem????

I’m not going to read all the in between posts right now, but we need to get this figured out.

We have wires on one end in the house. We have lights at the other end. We may or may not have another switch out in the garage. We had a timer before that kind of tells me it wasn’t a 3-way but still not sure. The idea was I assume the timer would be set in the house and the lights would come on and off with the timer and could also be turned on if needed when the timer was set to be off. You suspected the timer was bad and all you wanted was an on and off switch. So you put one in using what you thought were the timers in and out switched legs and you were left with the power leg that ran the timer. The switch on the right is the one we are talking about. We don’t care about the rest of the wires just the ones that were hooked to the timer and the ones you used and didn’t use when replacing it with a switch.

So for a switch to work it has to have power coming to one side of it and the other side gets power to it when the switch is closed.
Is that the case now?

The reason I’m going back to the switch is analytic troubleshooting says if something was working and you said you were pretty sure it was when you bought the house and then something was changed as in the switch for the timer, then the likelihood of the problem is at the place of change. That doesn’t mean that is the problem as your timer could have been fine and a wire failed but the likely hood is it is in that Jbox.

 

[nealtw]

Afrowookie


I haven’t been following your thread and I remember reading your first post and how nice it was you had a clear concise explanation of your problem and had already answered all the normal questions I would have asked. Here we are 17 pages later and still no resolution to your problem????

I’m not going to read all the in between posts right now, but we need to get this figured out.

We have wires on one end in the house. We have lights at the other end. We may or may not have another switch out in the garage. We had a timer before that kind of tells me it wasn’t a 3-way but still not sure. The idea was I assume the timer would be set in the house and the lights would come on and off with the timer and could also be turned on if needed when the timer was set to be off. You suspected the timer was bad and all you wanted was an on and off switch. So you put one in using what you thought were the timers in and out switched legs and you were left with the power leg that ran the timer. The switch on the right is the one we are talking about. We don’t care about the rest of the wires just the ones that were hooked to the timer and the ones you used and didn’t use when replacing it with a switch.

So for a switch to work it has to have power coming to one side of it and the other side gets power to it when the switch is closed.
Is that the case now?

The reason I’m going back to the switch is analytic troubleshooting says if something was working and you said you were pretty sure it was when you bought the house and then something was changed as in the switch for the timer, then the likelihood of the problem is at the place of change. That doesn’t mean that is the problem as your timer could have been fine and a wire failed but the likely hood is it is in that Jbox.

We can turn on the switch and he checked it and it works. the problem is we have no idea where the wire goes.

We can quickly identify the wire if we find the other end as it will contain a three wire and then prove it is the same wire.

The wire going to the garage in the conduit does not look like it has the same jacket and he has not found a cable with a red wire in the garage.

So the other end of the cable with 3 wires is in the house. We can find a solution to making a switch work with in code.
But I at least want to know that this cable has been disconnected properly.

 

[Snoonyb]

Open the switch box and put a wirenut on it.

 

[nealtw]

You may be right, but I don't think so since the garage only has two switches. But I will check tomorrow any how to confirm.

Turn off the breaker and find everything in the house that is also turned off.
And open things up until you find the red wire, then we we will prove it is the same wire.
Only then we can go ahead.

 

[bud16415]

Turn off the breaker and find everything in the house that is also turned off.
And open things up until you find the red wire, then we we will prove it is the same wire.
Only then we can go ahead.

What photo in what post shows this red wire? I can’t find it.

 

[Snoonyb]

What photo in what post shows this red wire? I can’t find it.

Posts #31 & #40

 

[bud16415]

Posts #31 & #40

Thanks :thbup:

 

[nealtw]

This gets better every day,IF you like a mystery!!
Every picture added adds more questions.

Every answer to those questions add more questions.

Observations so far.

Romex in the house has fabric jacket, I think it is older than Vinyl siding

Cables going to the garage have vinyl jackets, so the garage was not wired when the house was built.

A third conduit at the garage, I thought would be the ground for the sub panel, but it does not appear to have that ground in the box.

Why would someone move the sub in order to hang drywall and expose the cables.

4 white cables in the sub panel and 4 breakers but it appears only 3 breakers are in use.

Back to the house.

More than one wire coming to the switch box with power on the same breaker, strange?

Cable operated by switch has extra red wire, could mean a three way switch or split outlet.

If vinyl siding was added later it could be hiding a junction box on the outside of house.

I am thinking that sounder although expensive may be the only tool to have that will allow the OP to map the whole system and answer all the questions so he can know for sure everything is done correctly and safe for him and his family.

 

[Afrowookie]

Update,

Sorry haven't had time yet to look at all the switches and receptacles yet.

Been sick for about a week and now it's snowing like crazy and trying to catch up on clearing snow.

Hopefully will get time later this week. I want to look for what nealtw said. I will turn off the breaker and everything that that breaker turns off I will remove and look for that elusive red wire. Then I will get back with results.

Thanks for your patience and help.

 

[nealtw]

Update,

Sorry haven't had time yet to look at all the switches and receptacles yet.

Been sick for about a week and now it's snowing like crazy and trying to catch up on clearing snow.

Hopefully will get time later this week. I want to look for what nealtw said. I will turn off the breaker and everything that that breaker turns off I will remove and look for that elusive red wire. Then I will get back with results.

Thanks for your patience and help.

When you had the lights open at the front of the garage. What was the cable.
White vinyl covered
black vinyl covered
cloth covered like the the switch box in the house

 

[Afrowookie]

White Vinyl covered

 

[nealtw]

White Vinyl covered

It appears you have gas running to the garage, is there a heater out there and can you turn that off from the house?

 

[Afrowookie]

Yes I have a gas heater out in the garage. The breaker is in the garage. The panel in the garage has breakers one for heater, 2 x outlets, and one for the garage inside lights.