What color is a common wire ?
Question:I am replacing old 3 button (vertically aligned) light switch. There is 1 thick wire wrapped in white, 1 thick wire wrapped in black and 4 thin wires wrapped in black. I attached the white wire to the common wire screw and put the remaining wires around the screws. I am also replacing a toggle switch that will control the vanity lights above the sink. There are 4 clumps of wire coming through the box. The copper grounds are all twisted together, and there are multiple strands of white covered wire twisted together and then the 5 black cover wires and 1 white covered wires. After hooking it all up, it doesn't do anything. No lights, fan or heat lamp. What did I do wrong?
Answers:
Warning! Warning! Danger Will Robinson! Step away from the switch box!
But seriously -- electricity is not something to just guess at. There's a very real chance of electrocuting someone or buring your house down -- then, to add to your woes, when the insurance inspector finds that it was caused by a bad, non-inspected wiring job, they'll cancel your policy and refuse to pay on the claim.
Now, as to your problem -- luckily you did it wrong in such a way that nothing was hot - so no sparks, fire or death.
Picture your triple-switch as a capital "E" The spine of the E is the common, and supplies power to the arms, which are the three seperate switches tapping off the common hot and feeding power to whatever they're supplying. The big black wire is probable your hot source, but you'll need a volt meter to confirm. Connect the hot source wire (the one that's hot when the breaker is on) to the common, and the individual black wires to the other side of the three switches. The whites (neutrals) are all connected together, as are all of the grounds (whites together and grounds together -- not whites AND grounds together).
You lost me on the second circuit - you first describe it as supplying a vanity light - but then you mention lights, fan and heatlamp -- was that in reference to the triple switch, or...? Please clarify, but I'll answer - basing my answer on the assumption that this switch is ONLY controlling the vanity light, and the "No lights, fan or heat lamp" was refering to the triple switch in the first half of your question.
A single-switch light circuit can be wired in one of two ways -- either power comes into the switch box, and there will be a white and a black going to the light -OR- power will come into the light, and two wires will lead to the switch - these two wires should both be black or some other non-white color, but sometimes a white/black pair is used and the white is marked to indicate that it's really a "black", by either wrapping it in electrical tape or coloring it with permanent marker - unfortunately, some shody workmen ignore the requirement to color the white whire when it's used in a switch loop.
Before I start - all of this is predicated on the assumption that you ONLY disconnected the two wires from the original switch and you now have ONLY TWO loose wires. If this is not the case, then all bets are off and you should call an electrician, because there's not easy way to determine which wire is supposed to go where, and there's that whole fire/death thing we talked about earlier.
Because you've got a bunch of black wires coming into this box, my guess is that this is the hot source for this light circuit. If that's the case, then you should have a loose wire that ties into the bundle of black wires, and a second loose black wire that dissapears into the wall. If this is what you have, then the two black wires go on the switch and you're done.
If you don't have a black stub coming from the black bundle, then you should have two loose wires (probably both non-white, but could be black and white) dissapearing into the wall. This would be a switch loop. Connect the two loose wires to the switch, and you're done. If this was the case, and the light now works -- if one of the switch wires is white, take a magic marker and color it black before you bundle everything back up.
Now the lesson to learn from all of this for future projects is to NEVER disconnect any existing wiring until your ready to connect the replacement part. If you absolutely have to remove the existing part first to identify a replacement, then label each wire you disconnect with tape and a marker, and make a detailed diagram of what each wire was connected to.
with out seeint the setup it is almost impossiable to be able to answer your question you should call an electrician
Sounds like a mess.
But to answer the narrow question, Black wire carries Hot power, White wire is Neutral, and bare copper or green is Ground.
Don't kill yourself or cause a fire!!
Jeff Verde nailed it but forgot one thing. Never assume that the last person that installed wiring hooked it up to the right colors!
I've even seen people use a hot wire (Black) as the ground. Never assume it's right to start with!
In your first switch, the white wire shouldn't be connected to the switch. It should run directly from the fixture to the neutral bar in the breaker box or to a splice somewhere that leads directly to the neutral bar.
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