Hallway light problem

[CottonEyedHorn]

One of our hallway lights just started acting up recently. It's a standard fixture, with 2 60w bulbs, operated by two 3- way switches. It stopped working two days ago. Neither switch will turn it on. However, it did work briefly yesterday. The bulbs are fine. Do I have a bad ground somewhere? What should I check?

 

[NickDanger]

It wouldn't be a ground. Light fixtures frequently aren't grounded and even if the ground were to get disconnected it would not cause the fixture to stop working. 3-way switches are a little more prone to failure than 2-way, but I'd guess that you have a bad hot, traveler or neutral connection. I don't know if 3-way's even come with the option of shoving the wires into the back of the switch as opposed to screwing them down on the sides, but wires shoved into the back seem to be a little more prone to disconnecting themselves. If you want to check these things out yourself, you are going to have to trip the breaker and look at all the connections first. That means removing both switch plates as well as the fixture.

The white or neutral wires are going to be twisted together and most probably secured with a wire nut. They sometimes come untwisted. Easy enough to unscrew the nut and retwist. Sometimes the nut is wrapped with electrical tape as well.

You can then turn the breaker back on and see if that did the trick. You don't have to push the switch back into the box to make a preliminary check so long as the switch (the metal screws on the sides) is not touching any metal.

You will most likely be able to see if any of the black or red wires have come loose from the screws on the sides. Sometimes a red wire is not used and the electrician just uses another black wire to serve as the traveller. As long as you keep track of which wire goes to which post it shouldn't matter. Typically there are two screws on the left side of the switch and a screw on the right side. The red (or whatever color) wire would be expected to be on the screw on the upper right side of the switch.

Up in the fixture box, you will most probably have 3 wires nuts making connections. One will connect the 2 white wires together and the 2 others will connect the two black wires coming out of the fixture to black hot wires coming into the box. The wires coming out of the fixture will most likely be thinner, braides wires and the wires coming in will be the solid copper wires you just saw inside the switch box. Unscrew and retwist.

If none of that works you might try replacing the switches. They are a few bucks max at Home Depot.

 

[CottonEyedHorn]

THanks. I think I'll save myself a little work and just pick up two new switches on my way home

 

[NickDanger]

If I had to bet, I would bet on the wire nut connections in the fixture box.

 

[CottonEyedHorn]

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[pmg]

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[NickDanger]

I don't know why, but it seems those are the culprits most often. Maybe ceilings get a tad more vibration than vertical framing.

I didn't bet any money and I didn't buy a lotto ticket last night. I bet $1 on the Megamillions the night before and lost everything I bet. I'm not handling my gambling very well.