[Christians1]

Hello,

I have a light at the top of our stairs that is controlled by two switches. One at the bottom of stairs and one at the top.

I went to replace the light and disconnected the wires. After I did that I realized I should have took a pic of how they were cabled. The odd part of this is the wires are only two black and two white. It looks like the switches have the common wire between them.

So my question is how do I cable this back up?

Please see pic attached. Thanks

 

[joed]

When you turn on the breaker is anything else on the circuit still dead?
It is probably wired as a switch loop. You need to identify the hot pair. Do you have a meter? measure for voltage between the two black and white pairs.

 

[seharper]

Why did you disassemble wires that were not related to the lamp?

It appears to me that 1 black and 1 white wire are more curly than the others. I bet those went together under a wire nut before, and then the remaining black and white went to the lamp.

Anyway, there’s probably a white being used as a hot here. Such whites are supposed to be marked with black tape to indicate their use as a hot. This would have been a lot easier if that had been done!

 

[afjes2015]

It may be easier for us to see inside the box if you remove the bracket.


Please see my picture attached.
The part of the wire that I circled and placed an arrow to is that a black marking made on the wire by maybe a permanent marker signifying it is being used as a hot wire?

 

[joed]

This is almost certainly a switch loop. A reply to the questions in post #2 would confirm this.

 

[Christians1]

Ok so all i have is one of those pens the beep when it detects power.

It seems the black cable that is on the right side of the bracket and then is bent under the bracket to the left is the hot one.

here is my thought.

• That black(hot) wire which is the one pointing to the left goes to the white wire on the right side of the bracet
• Then the black on the far right side goes to the lamp and the remaining white(the one on the far left) goes to the lamp as well.

Let me know if that makes sense. Thanks everyone

 

[joed]

If your voltage measurements are correct then your wiring will be correct.

 

[Christians1]

Worked as expected. Thanks everyone for the responses!