Hi everyone, I recently bought a house (built in 1901) in Brooklyn NY. The light fixture in the entrance hallway is ugly as sin, so this past weekend the wife and I bought a new one. I figured it would take an hour or two to swap the old fixture for the new one. Here I am 5 days later still trying to figure it out. :wall: The hallway light that I’m replacing is controlled by a single switch. I’m replacing a hanging fixture with 4 bulbs to a hanging fixture with 1 bulb. When I removed the old fixture I was greeted by a nice tangled mess of old cloth-covered wires, in an old junction box unlike one I'd ever seen. I expected to see maybe three wires in the junction box, instead I've got 7. I used a non-contact tester and from what I see there were 3 hot wires grouped together in a wire nut (not connected to the old fixture, and not affected by the light switch on the wall); there were three neutral wires grouped together in a separate wire nut (connected to the neutral wire of the old fixture), and there was one more hot wire attached to the fixture's hot wire (this one is turned on/off by the switch on the way). Nothing is color coded as this is old wire. Also there is no ground wire. The old fixture did have a bare copper wire running down its chain, but I don’t believe it was attached to anything in the junction box. FYI the new fixture doesn’t have a ground wire at all. The new fixture wouldn’t fit onto the old junction box due to the shape and being no place to attach a cross bar, so step 1 was to remove the old junction and replace with a new one. Due to the space available I had to use a 1/2" deep “pancake” junction box. I replaced the box, and reconnected the wires as they had been. I tested again with a non-contact tester, and again everything seemed fine. One of the hot leads only shows current when I turn the switch on, the other three hot leads always show current even when the switch is off, and the remaining three wires show no current at all. I then used a circuit tester- when I touch the junction box with the tester’s negative wire and touch a hot wire with the positive, the tester shows me 120V. The same happens if I touch the hot and neutral wires. I then attached the fixture. The neutral went to neutral and the hot went to hot. I even double-checked these with a continuity test- the hot wire is connected to where the light bulb’s tip will be, and the neutral is where the outside threading of the bulb will be. When I turned on the light it doesn’t work. MORE IMPORTANTLY when I put the non-contact tester next to the fixture itself it lit up and beeped. So unless I’m going crazy there is actually currently going through the metal OUTSIDE of the fixture, i.e. the decorative canopy covering the light. I’m not seeing current in the chain from which the fixture is hanging. I immediately shut off power again at the breaker box, removed the fixture, and checked connections. Again everything seems OK. I’m not seeing a short (using a continuity test) between the hot wires and the junction box, or between the hot/netural wires, etc. Not really sure what to do from here. Can the fixture itself be broken? Any help or insight is appreciated.

I just purchased an outside light with a motion sensor, for my porch. Directions says white wire with white wire and black wire with black wire. Well when I took it out of the box. The black wire was connected to a red wire and a brown wire was loose. The white wire was connected to a red wire too, but it has a wire coming down so I can connect it to the outside wall. Is this correct, is it safe to attach the brown wire to black or did that package it wrong and the brown is suppose to be connected to the red and the black wire be loose. I'm far from being an electrician. But this simple task, has now got me confused. Any help will be appreciated. I tried to upload a pic but it won't upload it.