Excess wiring in housing?
#1
07-08-15, 09:40 AM
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Excess wiring in housing?
This is another "is this safe" type of questions from me...
We purchased a pendant light. The manufacturer provides waaaaay too much excess cord, and has gone out of their way to not print the polarities on the sheathing of the individual wires, beyond some little sticky labels on the very end of them. I could cut the wires but it's going to be a bit difficult for me to figure out which wire is which once I cut them. Judging by the instructions, they don't really intend for you to trim the wires.
My question is...would it be bad for me to put the excess wiring up in the box, as shown in the picture? Seems like it's a deep enough box, and it doesn't feel "stuffed" in there. Plenty of wiggle room....I'm just not sure if this is a safety hazard or anything?
We purchased a pendant light. The manufacturer provides waaaaay too much excess cord, and has gone out of their way to not print the polarities on the sheathing of the individual wires, beyond some little sticky labels on the very end of them. I could cut the wires but it's going to be a bit difficult for me to figure out which wire is which once I cut them. Judging by the instructions, they don't really intend for you to trim the wires.
My question is...would it be bad for me to put the excess wiring up in the box, as shown in the picture? Seems like it's a deep enough box, and it doesn't feel "stuffed" in there. Plenty of wiggle room....I'm just not sure if this is a safety hazard or anything?
#2
07-08-15, 10:03 AM
Cut the wire. One of the two wires should have a ridge paralleling it or writing of some kind on it. That is the neutral. All else fails use a multimeter set to ohms to determine which wire goes to the threaded shell. The shell is neutral and tab at the bottom hot.
#3
07-08-15, 10:07 AM
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No ridge on any of the wires...they're all clear, and smooth. And, there's a ground wire, so there's three identical wires I'd need to differentiate between.
#5
07-08-15, 10:40 AM
I'm not a fan of coiling the wire up like that. Coiled up wires tend to create extra heat due to induction, basically you're building yourself an electromagnet. Granted, it would be very unlikely to cause any issues... but I like Ray's idea to cut the wires even if it takes a bit more work to figure out which wire is which.
#7
07-08-15, 11:13 AM
It's not an inductive heating problem because the hot and neutral are both running parallel in the coil which "cancels out" the magnetic field. It could be a regular heating problem just due to too much wire balled up in a closed space, but probably not given the wattage is maybe 50W at the end of that cord.
If you do want to cut it, leave 6" at the end to make the connections. Just look carefully at the cord before you cut it and trace back which one is which using your finger to keep track. You could probably just yank the three conductors apart too. That type of cord usually separates pretty easily by hand once you get it started. Mark the neutral with white tape and the ground with green tape.
If you do want to cut it, leave 6" at the end to make the connections. Just look carefully at the cord before you cut it and trace back which one is which using your finger to keep track. You could probably just yank the three conductors apart too. That type of cord usually separates pretty easily by hand once you get it started. Mark the neutral with white tape and the ground with green tape.
#8
07-08-15, 11:24 AM
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Yeah, might do something like that. Unfortunately the three wires aren't the "peel apart" kind, kind of like speaker wires or one of those cheap extension cords would be... The three individual wires are coated, and then there's an outer coating covering those. Not trying to make excuses but it's going to be a ***** to pull it off.
It's one LED light at the end of this thing, pulling 5W. It's one really small pendant.
It's one LED light at the end of this thing, pulling 5W. It's one really small pendant.
#10
07-08-15, 11:53 AM
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More of the sheath of the NM cable should be removed .
The cord from the fixture can be cut. The wires are identified by a raised rib on the white conductor. You can see that one of the conductor is silver and one is copper.
The cord from the fixture can be cut. The wires are identified by a raised rib on the white conductor. You can see that one of the conductor is silver and one is copper.
#11
07-08-15, 12:03 PM
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I assure you, there is no raised rib, and there are no colors. It's three sets of silver colored wire, each covered by identical transparent sheathing.
#12
07-08-15, 12:27 PM
I really have no idea how to do any of that
The image shows an analog multimeter. The needle will move to the right when you have continuity. A digital meter will show ~0.
Many here recommend a cheap ($8-$15) analog multimeter, not digital, if you need to buy one,
#13
07-08-15, 12:35 PM
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Great, thanks -- so once I tell which is the neutral, how do I tell the difference between the other two? The hot, neutral and ground are all identical.
#15
07-08-15, 03:19 PM
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We purchased a pendant light. The manufacturer provides waaaaay too much excess cord
#16
07-08-15, 06:05 PM
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