Hello, I am inexperienced in this area but just looking for advice before calling an electrician if necessary. I would be grateful for any insight. We have a single light switch on the porch that turns on 5 outside lights along both sides of our backyard. The lines to these go through the dirt/behind raised beds of brick that have trees and ivy growing in them. The light switch is fed with power from a box below the porch. Another line on the same breaker in our fuse box powers a backyard fountain. Chain of events: -The last/furthest light fixture's light bulb had been burnt out for several months. I finally changed it, I believe on Wednesday almost two weeks ago. All the lights worked after I changed the light bulb. I changed it from a 100W incandescent to a 100W-equivalent LED. -That Friday (two days later) we had a scheduled power outage from the city. About 30-45 minutes before the power to the house went out, I noticed that all of the backyard lights were out and wouldn't turn back on. I can't remember if the switch had been on or off when I noticed. Power came back on in the morning, and the fountain started up but the lights still wouldn't work. -My husband thought the first/easiest possibility to check, since the power to the fountain worked fine, was that the light switch itself was bad. He took it out and hooked it back up with a new one we had picked up at Lowe's. In the process, 1/2" of the copper ground wire snapped off and now it is too short to connect to the back of the switch. -Upon reconnecting the wires to the new switch, but not screwing it back into the wall (so it's hanging off and none of the wires are improperly touching), we turn the power back on to the backyard @ the breaker, and when he flips the switch to the lights, it trips the breaker back off again. -He reconnected the old switch back to the wires (except the ground wire which as mentioned is now too short). Flips the switch on, and it doesn't trip the breaker, but doesn't turn on the lights either. Do we have a faulty switch? The wrong kind of switch? What's the next thing to check? Thanks in advance!

Good day all. I have recently retired from Europe (where I (re)wired some houses) to a "developing" nation which uses 220V and "American inspired" wiring (apart from the voltage). I was pretty good at at physics at school 50 years ago. I have no professional experience in electrical wiring anywhere.I was complimented on the quality of my work by government inspectors where local regulations required inspection. I have a problem with the (single) wiring circuit in my new condominium. Since two professional electricians did some work during a fairly large renovation a number of lights no longer work and I can't get anybody else to trouble shoot. I should add that the notion of colour coded cables does not seem to apply here. Many lights and sockets are wired with a single colour of wire so it is very hard to distinguish live from neutral. There is no earth/ground circuit in the condo. As I use UPS to protect my computers and TV I asked the electrician to set up earth connections to the metal socket boxes, and to the condo rebar where this was exposed. So I have decided to attempt to fix the problem myself. I use a fluke t90 voltmeter for testing. My problem is I have a number of obscure voltages on my lighting circuit. 120V, 50V, 12V..... Some lights work. Some don't. My suspicion is that the electrician has wired the neutral of a different circuit to the wiring circuit by mistake. A further difficulty I have is I am used to working with +220 and 0. However some people here who seem to know what they are talking about insist the local utility supplies +110/-110. Note however nobody uses 110V appliances here, everything is wired across the pins to get 220. To test this I ran a single cable from a metal balcony railing (to act as ground) to the main circuit board light circuit. The result shows +220 on the live, and zero on the neutral which I think 100% proves I am at +220 and zero. Am I right? Something that confuses me however is that the "continuity" light on the fluke comes on when I connect lighting circuit neutral on the breaker panel to the balcony railing. Does this sound normal? There is no wire connecting the balcony to an earth wire elsewhere. Thanks in advance for any help. Please don't say find a competent electrician. There aren't any, as the many electrical fires attest.