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| bungy:
I thought I was pretty good at wiring AC, but this issue has me stumped. I want to wire a few outlets to the inside of my cabinet and have a single detachable cord supplying the power. One outlet will always be hot (the PC will always be on and controlled by a pushbutton on top of the cab), and the other outlet will be switched on & off with a toggle switch on top of the cab (This will power the monitor, marquee, illuminated trackball, and coin reject lights). I wired the two outlets and switch in what I thought was the correct way, but my switched outlet was showing 46 volts on my multimeter when it was off. It went up to 120 volts as expected when the switch was on. I systematically swapped out each receptacle and switch to check if there was a defective part, but I got the same results. So now I've stripped the setup down to one outlet controlled by a standard lightswitch and I'm still seeing 18 volts when the switch is off (and 120 when it is on). What could be causing this? I tested with a receptacle tester and it appears to be wired correctly. The first pic shows the type of connector I'm using and the second one is a barebones test setup. The incoming neutral wire goes directly to the left side of the outlet and the hot wire goes to the switch. The other side of the switch comes back to right side of the outlet. Each part is connected to the incoming ground wire. Am I doing this wrong, or is there some other principle of AC that I'm not taking into account? |
| Kevin Mullins:
Kill the breaker for that particular wall outlet you are using as a power source and measure it. |
| bungy:
I tried a few outlets throughout the house with the same results. One of them I know for sure doesn't carry a voltage when the breaker is off because I had worked on it recently. |
| BobA:
To quickly check all your outlets and wiring get an AC outlet tester. Works well and spots your wiring problems quickly. |
| bungy:
Yes, I have been using that in combination with a digital multimeter. The outlet tester indicates that everything is wired correctly, but checking with the multimeter shows that there is still some voltage making it to the outlet when it should be off |
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