ok so i am trying to change my old ceiling light fixture with this 3 light celing fixture. i dont see a regular copper ground wire or a green screw to screw the new copper wire that comes with my light fixture. all i see is what seems a silver ground wire like 2 of them knot together, the old fixture didn't have a ground wire and i have been in this house for 9 years no problem. can i just leave the ground wire in the new fixture without connecting it to anything just maret it and leave it there or can i just cut it off some how and don't connect a ground wire.

 

Sounds like Tinned wire. Can you post a picture? http://www.doityourself.com/forum/li...-pictures.html

 

ok i am trying to upload a pic i hope u can see the silver wire is in between the whits and black

 

I don't see the silver wire you are talking about.

 

I know it is hard to see but it is like in etween the black and whites and it looks like a pigs tail. so the thing is the old light fixture didnt have a ground wire at all can i ust remove the copper wire that is in the new light fixture and put it up like that

 

Looks like a bare wire in the back of the box. Does that wire go to any screw in the back of the box ? I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm looking at. Are the wires charred/burned? Also, very hard to tell from pic but it looks like you have aluminum wiring.

 

That set of bare wires, twisted (spliced) together, is the set of ground conductors from the cables feeding your ceiling box. That is where you need to connect the ground wire from the fixture.

You can, but you shouldn't. The Equipment Grounding Conductor, or ground, on your fixture is an emergency drain for any power that cannot find it's regular path back to ground, through the neutral conductors. If it isn't connected to the EGCs (the ground wires) in the house wiring, any stray voltage will remain on the frame of the fixture until it does find a path to ground, which could be through you or anyone else reaching up to change a light bulb.

Several members have asked about aluminum wiring in this thread. There are two reasons for that. The first is the silvery appearance of the conductors we can see, which you also mentioned. The ground wires do, in fact, appear to be oxidized aluminum conductors. The second reason is that the use of aluminum for household branch circuit wiring, which was popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s, fell out of popularity as we learned more about the hazards it poses. The New York Times had an article on this subject a few years ago, titled The Fire Dangers of Aluminum Wiring.

One the conditions under which aluminum conductors are most likely to fail is when they are directly spliced to copper conductors. This is due to galvanic corrosion. If your light fixture has copper wiring and if, in fact, your household wiring is aluminum, you should use connectors that keep the two metals separate. One example is the Copalum crimp-on connectors, with copper pigtails, mentioned in the Times article. Those are a great solution but, as the article article also pointed out, that repair requires special professional installation and can be expensive. Another solution, more accessible to DIYers, is to use Alumiconn connectors. You can get a free sample of those from the manufacturer, which should be enough to safely connect this fixture, and allow you to evaluate their use for all of the other places you will need them.

Bottom line, if the wiring is aluminum, you should not use wire nuts (merets) to connect the copper conductors in your new fixture to it. There is no wire nut made that will allow that to be done safely, because wire nuts do not separate the conductors - they combine them. And, yes, you should also a short jumper to bond the ground wires to a new green ground screw in your ceiling box.

 

Thanks for your answer that is a lot of good info to know. ok so this is what i ended up doing, i got the info from guys from work electrician and anothe diydoers. the light fixture came with a bracket which is the part that is attach to the electrical box and that bracket has a screw which say ground so i connected the ground wire to that since the box is already grounded i assume it is ok to do it that way. hope u understand what i ended up doing.

 

It is, given that the box is bonded to ground. Did you test to make sure it is?

But what about the other question: Is the wiring in your house copper or aluminum?

 

.no i didn't actually test it to make sure.
-and for the other thing i have done a couple other light and replace some plugs and it is copper.

 

If the wiring is aluminum you would need special connectors listed for use with AL.