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hot / neu wiring reversed, getting a shock

1K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  frenchelectrican 
#1 ·
Dear Sirs; this is my first time on site, in our home we added
on a outlet, it was straight forward, a short jump and all went well.
But, the original outlet was evidently somehow wired wrong.
The three prong tester says that it is hot / neu reversed.
But, when I pulled the outlet from the wall, both are wired correctly,
black wires on the hot side and the neutral white wires on the neutral side. so, this ( I guess ) must mean that the original outlet has wires going to it that are reversed, and thus causing the problem down
stream. The real bad part is that we plugged in a Sewing machine out
in the garage, and when you touch the machines frame, oh yes, you get a shock, ouch !!! O K, my question is how do you find where the wires are reversed, to add to the confusion, some other outlets that are on the very same circuit, show as being wired correctly.
I definitely need to get this corrected, we need the Sewing machines up and running, since some outlets are correct, this must mean that the troubles do not exist in the Circuit breaker panel.
anyway, I have with the use of a voltage detector discovered that
the testor is telling me the truth, again, even though the outlets are
wired correct, yep, hot / neu reversed. Please advise any ideas or
tricks of the trade, Thank You Steve and Alice Andrews
 
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#3 ·
If you are extending the circuit the issue you will run into couple items espcally with older conductors some peoples will put in bootleg grounding which it is very dangerous so turn off the breaker on that circuit and check all the connections at all switches and receptales on that circuit once you verified it is correct then you will have to go up in attic or go in basement or crawl space and check the junction boxes to make sure the connections are correct.

Black conductor will always go to brass colour screw while white conductor { netural } will go to silver screw while the ground { Bare or green } will go to green screw.

A quick tip with hot conductor the blade on the receptale is narrower than netural so that is the other way you can tell if you going to test it.

Merci.
Marc
 
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