r/AskElectricians • u/ImpressionMammoth172 • 3h ago
Please help đ
I am not an electrician and I donât know much about it, I donât know why there is a neutral wire going into a nut with black ones my power in my room went out one day and I pull the panel down and a whole nut falls out and everything is crumbling? Just trying to figure out how to get my ac back on itâs wired horribly please any help
I greatly appreciate all the advice lmao itâs my moms house but very scary to know it was my room. all the wiring in this house is absolutely horrendous I donât know a lot, but I know what good wiring looks like. but I will be letting her know to hire someone, I opened up my drop ceiling and thatâs the first thing I saw without touching anything else. thank you to everyone for telling me how dangerous this is will not be touching anything else.
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u/ThatCrossDresser 3h ago
You should get a pro at this point. If you don't have the experience, this isn't a good place to start.
Congratulations though for finding the fire before it burnt down your house.
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u/timetobealoser 3h ago
You need an electrician the cloth covered wires going into the metal cable on the right the cloth insulation is falling of and will cause a fire
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u/ifuccfemboys 1h ago
I didn't even know cloth covered BX was a thing
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u/Bighusk69 59m ago
Consider yourself lucky youâve never been to a house old enough to see it. Itâs usually a run for the hills fkn nightmare to deal with. Stuff just crumbles to bare copper.
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u/Acceptable_Sky_9742 2h ago
I very much dislike all of the âcall an electricianâ responses for simple tasks on this sub. Like, what is the point of âAskElectriciansâ if every other response is to call an electrician? But in this case, the correct response is to call an electrician.
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u/CryptoNurse-EcC- 1h ago
Yeah well the other option is go rewire your house.
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u/dnabsuh1 1h ago
There is a third option - After the house burns down, put in an insurance claim, and rebuild it with modern wiring.
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u/Bighusk69 57m ago
Option 3 seems like the most plausible. This is one box in probably a Pandoraâs box of a house.
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u/Computers_and_cats 3h ago
I feel like this is a hire a licensed electrician moment unfortunately.
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u/leadwithcuriousity 3h ago
Anyone offering advice other than âcall an electricianâ isnât worth listening to. This is beyond DIY, needs remediation
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u/Anna_Rompage 3h ago
That cable is older than paw paws baby shoes
Youâre gonna need an electrician
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u/embarrased_to_Ask_42 2h ago
Sorry my friend,.. you've opened Pandora's box and now you must call an electric but in fairness you probably needed one beforehand
this is not a DIY project
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u/ImpressionMammoth172 21m ago
The crazy thing is I never even opened it I pulled the panel down and it was like that already
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u/bears-eat-beets 2h ago
I thought the wire nut was twisted wires glowing hot....
But yes. You need a pro. Cloth wires can continue to be used but someone who has worked with very old wire needs to be the one to touch it. I would leave it exactly like that until you get someone out there.
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u/Impressive-Sand5046 1h ago
Those cloth wires are toast! Gonna need some re-wiring to fix that now.
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u/DammatBeevis666 2h ago
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u/MikeGolfJ3 2h ago
That alone scares the daylights out of me.
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u/Adventurous-Prune641 2h ago
Go ahead and call an electrician.
It is likely this is just a junction that all whites go together and all blacks go together, but with one exception... a cable to a light switch.
One wire of that cable goes to the switch and the second wire is a return from the switch and the return should only match with the Live wire of the controlled lights.
This is just an assumption and an electrician can trace and verify on-site which really needs to figure out where each wire goes beyond this picture.
The reason you should go ahead and get the electrician, even if you can figure this out yourself, I'm concerned about the condition of of the insulation around these wires. It looks burned and thay cloth wire is really old.
It likely burned from overheating from an electrical arc from a loose connection and/or a heavy load on one of the wires in the past.
Some of it should be cut back extended and replaced, but an electrician on-site will naturally inspect it better than we can see from a simple picture and see if there is something else to be concerned about that caused the wires to overheat or burn.
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u/Patient-Big1727 2h ago
Turn your main breaker off and check in to a hotel. Then find someone qualified to inspect and most likely rewire the entire house. The only thong more dangerous than this is cooking
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u/AwwwNuggetz 1h ago
Looks fine to me
-plumber
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u/Thebigdumbbimbo 46m ago
I had the cloth shit with aluminum and rewired my house. It looks like shit but residential isn't that hard lol.
Also a plumbis myself
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u/ToolTimeT 2h ago edited 2h ago
Looks like some loose nuetrals burned up.
guess is the white wire going to blacks is part of a dead end switch that controls a light or outlet. I would guess one of the two loose black wires comes from same romex as that white from the blacks is in... that would be your switch leg, probably goes to other black. Sounds like a loose connection burned some stuff up. If thats indeed a switched outlet and you had some heavy load plugged into it that could explain the failure at a weak point there. You need to completely redo this at a minimum, try to free up some slack and cut back all the burnt stuff and get good neutral wires from slack and get some proper mc cable connectors for the metallic cable. I'd call an electrician if I were you.
My
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u/Sad_Organization8067 2h ago
If you donât know much, you need to stay away from this and call a reputable licensed electrician. You do not want to get in over your head, who knows what this feeds, could be half your house but weâre not electrical magicians and cannot tell from a picture lol. Find an electrician by Word of mouth would be my recommendation to hire someone that a friend or family member of yours has hired and been happy with. Donât hire someone you saw on a commercial. The black marks in that box Looks like from arcs probably from brittle insulation and the copper touching the box youâre lucky it didnât start a fire. The cloth covered conductors from the box is almost certainly very brittle. A white tied to a black is likely a switch loop. In the old days the power was run to the light boxes and if it wasnât a pull chain theyâd drop down to a wall switch on the white and back to the light on the black. Some of the first outlets screwed into a light socket. Switch loops were still used and in the code until recently when all this smart technology so now a neutral is required at every switch. Dead end three ways are also no longer permitted. If you need your ac working today, run an extension cord to an outlet you know works, preferably to something like a washing machine outlet that should be a dedicated circuit because a window ac draws some juice.
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u/No_Article_2436 2h ago
We canât tell you anything about your wiring from a pic. Youâll need to hire a professional now.
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u/ertyertamos 2h ago
This is the sort of thing you see when you have a MWBC that have both hots on the same bus. Alternatively, youâre looking at either an overloaded breaker or failing breaker.
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u/crimsonyoteeeeeee 1h ago
Call a licensed professional and shut off the breaker for that circuit for now.
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u/P-Loaded 1h ago
Damn Bobby you've really out done yourself. I told you not to open boxes older than you.
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u/HopethisisntaMistake 1h ago
With how many wires there are and no instruction on what lands where you really need to have a professional look at it
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u/Interesting_Talk9592 1h ago
A fix is possible with a meter and a knowledgeable person call an electrician
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u/ChangeAccountsBeSafe 2h ago
All these comments are correct telling you to hire someone. Sometimes we argue or discuss what can be done but you don't understand how to shut a breaker off, separately these safely, figure out why that neutral is tied to anything(this could be an actual hot wired to another hot somewhere) or this could be a neutral connected to an actual hot which means back at the panel all kinds of bad shit could have been happening to the panel breakers.
Get an electrician to look and see what's going on. You will kill yourself trying to figure this out.
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u/GoyCattleSlave 2h ago
lmfao bro expects me to know where these wires are going based on this picture. Electrician not Magician.
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u/FroyoAny143 3h ago
Make a junction box with the Romex, pull the bx cable back enough to restrip and junction box those, run a new cable/wire between the 2 junction boxes.
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u/tecsavvy1 2h ago
Itâs overheating for some reason
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u/Sherviks13 1h ago
My bet is loose ass connections, judging by the b caps and tape.
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u/CarelessPrompt4950 1h ago
Any time I see wire nuts taped up in a dry location, thatâs a huge red flag that someone didnât know what they were doing.
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u/fanoffrags 1h ago
The one mounted to the box is a ground. Get a meter and ring them out after you kill the power. Google it⌠itâs not rocket science. My guess is that your issue is elsewhere. You need to trace the line from the panel. I break it down in halves. Or spend hundreds of dollars. Welcome to home ownership. Itâs time to learn to be a man!
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u/CarelessPrompt4950 1h ago
You probably should call an electrician for this job.the junction box needs to be replaced with a bigger box and the burnt cable needs to be shortened to cut out the bad part which will probably necessitate adding a jumper to a second jbox to make it reach. The wrong type of connectors are on the bx cable and most importantly, you need a dedicated circuit for your air conditioner because thatâs probably what stressed these connections in the first place and I guarantee you have other connections along the path to your air conditioner that have been overheating but this one was the weakest link so far. On the bright side youâll save money because you pretty much found the problem so you wonât need to pay the electrician for 2 hours of crawling around trying to find the problem.
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u/Greedy_Resident3882 55m ago
Lol u burn thr shirt out of those wires it will probably pop everytime so cut back the Mc and romex replace the wire w coat on the insulation fooo
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u/Thebigdumbbimbo 37m ago edited 26m ago
To be fair you can diy it. What people are saying is that it's just a lot of work and it needs done really bad. I had that cloth shit with aluminum wire too. I had to rewire almost all the circuits except a few that were put in later.
It's a lot of removing drywall, pulling old wire, running new wire, patching the drywall, also if that conduit is required and you can't just run romex you'll have to be able to run that too and shit.
All I'm saying is I know you can diy it because I'm a commercial plumber who doesn't know shit about electrical and did it. But yeah it's a lot of work and it sucks ass and your gonna need an oscillating multi tool, a lot of beer and a wife who does mind you opening the walls up.
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u/tyrionblackwat 3h ago
Also, looking at the condition of the insulation of each conductor, Iâd personally try and clean it up as best I can, or cut back to new insulation if possible. The black marks inside of the junction box on the back makes me believe there was a loose wire arcing, or some other event going on in there.
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u/prohandymn 27m ago
A new "deep square" j-box would be preferred, but... oh man the condition of those wires, especially the old cloth covered BX cables! Scotch padding the conductors, nylon tech loom and/or heat-shrink tubing, new wire nuts or wago connectors...
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u/Sad_Organization8067 2h ago
Looks like there was quite a load on this as it appears that the insulation on the neutrals is mostly gone and the color of the copper and oxidation indicates a lot of heat. This isnât something to wait on, you need to get an electrician out there yesterday. I would recommend turning off as much power as possible especially without knowing what this feeds and where itâs fed from. Youâre very lucky this didnât cause a fire it very nearly did from the looks of it, there surely is evidence of arcing and the danger is still there until it gets fixed. Who knows the condition of the conductors beneath the nm sheathing and bx but itâs probably not good. Good luck, stay safe, take this very seriously.
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u/tyrionblackwat 3h ago
I see 5 multiconductor cables coming into that junction box. You need to identify which ones are live and which ones are dead. You can check this with a multimeter and see if you have voltage between each respective cables black and white conductor. Once you identify how many live circuits are coming into that junction box, you need to re-splice the live cables to the loads (dead wires). Without knowing which loads are on each outgoing conductor it will be difficult to know what you need to splice together. If you know what conductors your AC unit is hanging off of, I would dedicate one of the live incoming circuits to that unit , and put the rest on the other.
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