[JLawrence08648]

My sister's ex-husb took his ceiling light off and disconnected all the wires and now wants to install it. I didn't want to know why, don't ask.

I posted pics.

The power is going to the ceiling, there is no power at the switch. There is no ground in the house, very old wiring.

There is one hot wire at the light which I've identified with a tick tracer and meter. I then used a sound generator hooking it up to the 2 disconnected wires at the switch and the sound generator receiver wand beeped strongly at 2 wires at the light. Can I assume these are the two same wires at the switch? And the other wires at the light are common?

The wire with the masking tape at the bottom of the pic is the hot wire, the 2 wires at the top of the pic with the masking tape are the switch wires.

With 2 wires at the light fixture, what wires at the ceiling box do I hook to the light? I tried the hot wire and 1 of the switch wires. Should I have twisted both of the switch wires at the light box and hooked it to the other fixture wire? Should I have twisted 1 switch wire and the hot wire together going to 1 of the fixture wires and the other switch wire at the fixture to the box wire that goes to the switch?

 

[Nealtw]

Power goes to the switch and comes back to the black of the fan.
The neutral that is with the power wire goes to the white of the fan.

 

[JLawrence08648]

The power in this situation is at the ceiling box, there is no white and black, it's an old house at a time when wires were not colored.

 

[Nealtw]

The power in this situation is at the ceiling box, there is no white and black, it's an old house at a time when wires were not colored.

Put black tape on the power wire and both wires to the switch

One of the wires to the switch goes to the black of the fan.
The other wire to the switch goes to power.

Put white tape on the last wire and it goes to the white of the fan.

 

[JLawrence08648]

What fan? This is a light fixture.

 

[Nealtw]

What fan? This is a light fixture.

Sub light for fan, sorry :wink2:

 

[RAL238]

It looks like there are 6 wires in the photo of the ceiling box, but it's a little hard to tell.

Two of them probably go to the light switch. The two you identified with the toner are probably the right ones. But best to verify with an ohm meter.

Two other wires are the hot and neutral feed coming in. And the other two wires are probably a hot and neutral going to the next device on the circuit.

Since the wires aren't black and white, you will need to figure out where those two other wires go next and determine which is the hot and which is the neutral.