Rookie Electrician Needing Help!

I have a fan controller with 3 wires coming out of it, a white, a black and a ground.



I'm thinking it should have a common and an out. Does it matter which wire you connect to the power?
      

I'm in the process of planning to wire up two spot lights on the face of my deck as well as running an outlet (which will also be under the deck) for a LV transformer to plug in to. I will need a few junction boxes to achieve this, as well as electrical boxes for the two spot lights. I'm planning on running 12AWG THWN through some sort of conduit run along the joists to the various lighting locations and junction boxes. This will be between 3' to 8' above the surface of the ground and under roof for the most part (we built a roof over the majority of the deck as well).



So, do you recommend PVC and plastic boxes or EMC and the appropriate boxes?
      

I'm installing a new outdoor light on the house (replacing a single flood with a motion sensor security light). I didn't realize until I took the old one off the house today that it's got a small rectangular junction box. The brackets that came with the new (round-based) light won't even fit in there. Is there any kind of adapter you can get, or is it a DIY kind of thing?



My biggest concern is keeping insects and water out of there. It's under the overhang, but I'd rather keep it sealed well if I can.
      

So I recently bought a home.  There was an old rusted and rotted lamp post out front.  This past weekend it blew over in the wind.  Not kidding.   I turned off the circuit on our breaker box, i unscrewed the caps connecting the main wire to the lamp head. I removed the poll lamp head, can I just recap the single wires and roll the wire back into the ground?  Will just capping the wires be safe?
      

Hi all,



I have two outdoor receptacles that are wired into a junction box in the crawlspace under my house. They are actually ran into a spare bedroom's circuit...therefore not gfi protected.  There is a switch above the access (indoors) to the crawlspace that powers these outlets and also light that runs off of the junction point also.



Would I be able to replace the switch with a dead front gfci switch to get these outlets protected. Would doing this be safe and up to code?



Would I be better off undoing all of the previous owner's work and putting these on a dedicated gfci circuit?



House was built in '87 and I am in the US.
      

I want to run a new 12/3 to wire a room added on the back of the house. One circuit will be 6 wall outlets. The other will be a ceiling fan and 4 recessed cans. Can I add 2 outdoor lights-using standard outdoor bulbs-to the same circuit as the ceiling lights? Do I use the wall switch(box properly sized) as the junction for the outlet wiring and feed to wall switch for outdoor lights?
      

Hello all.  I'm new on the forums and new to electricial.  I bought a house recently and found some outdoor outlets that don't work.  Only one does.  I've searched the forums and found some troubleshooting steps such as reset all the GFI outlets in house, but that didn't resolve the issue.  None of the outdoor outlets are GFI (they don't have a button).  I only have one circuit breaker and I've looked around and didn't find a second one.  None of the circuit breakers are label for the outdoor outlets and they are all in the "on" position.  All the indoor outlets work fine.  What other troubleshooting steps can I do before forking out $$ for an electrician?  Thanks!
      

I usually install my plugs one after another but was wondering if you could feed a middle one and just feed to the one on the right and the one on the left from the middle.  I attached a 2 second paint picture to better explain.
      

I have been wanting to add some soffit lighting for a while now.  After researching, I see many companies in Canada offering LED soffit fixtures; they are all fairly pricey ($90+/fixture), however.  These lights seem much brighter than anything I have seen offered in the states.  I really would rather go toward this approach rather than incandescents.  I've attached a couple of pictures of the look I want (LEDs are pictured).  Please suggest away! Thanks.







An example of a company offering these: http://sgilighting.ca
      

This is kind of a complicated question, but I  think I have figured out how to do it right.  I wanted to run it by some folks here before going to the city code enforcer.  See the attached diagrams for details.



I  am planning a fairly elaborate lighting scheme for my home theater  area, mostly because I plan for the theater automation to be a hobby for  me. (I'm an electrical engineer)

 

I want to have banks of lights that I could later choose to group  differently onto dimmer switches.  For example, I have six can lights.   Some people I have talked to think I should dim the front four together  and back two separately.  Some think I should dim the front two together  and back four separately.  Some say I should dim them all together. 



So I decided I'd run each group of two cans to a junction box, run  the switches to a junction box, and then wire the switches to the lights  in the junction box - then I could later change it if I decided it should work  differently.  In addition, this would keep the junction boxes the  dimmers were in free from extra wires, since I plan to buy nice dimmers  that are fairly deep and would take more space in the switch boxes.  And  if I find that using switches differently would make it more intuitive,  I can change which switch controls which lights easily after the fact.   This would also allow me later to possibly control the lights with an  automated system.

 

There are some track lights and rope lights, as well as a couple  receptacles that would all come back to the junction box where they'd be  connected to the switches/dimmers.



I am bringing in power from  two circuits to balance the lighting.  I plan to put some of the lights  on one circuit and some on the other.  The second circuit has some other  stuff on it already, so it has less load left over, so most stuff will  go on the first circuit.

 

Also to save on wiring and make running wire easier, I was planning  to use 14/3 wiring where possible.  Any given 14/3 wire would  always be connected to only one of the circuits (no shared neutrals).



The attached files show my exact plan for each circuit. Note they both  share the junction box in the upper right corner of the pictures, they  also share the switch banks.  This allows me to decide which switches  control which lights, as well as decide which lights will be powered on  which circuit to balance them properly.  Note that the track lights are  each 2 circuit track, that's why I'm running 14/3 to each.

   

See the attached files for circuit #1 and circuit #2



I am running 14/3 NM to the switches.  I was planning to have two  switches share one 14/3 cable.  I am also running 14/3 to each group of  two light groups that I want to control separately.



I've also attached a diagram from the perspective of the junction box.



I also attached an example circuit on how I plan to use the 14/3 wire.

   

Here are some other decisions I made:



- The junction box will  be PVC 8x8x4 (256 cu. in.)  All the wires coming into the box add up to  70 cu in. so the box should be plenty large.

- All the grounds from both circuits will be tied together

  - The neutrals for both circuits will always be kept completely separate (NO shared neutrals)

- No 14/3 wire will ever carry power from more than one circuit (this would violate the shared neutrals anyway)



Even  though this is kind of elaborate and for hobby, I want to be sure to do  it safely and up to code.  Does anyone see anything wrong with  my plan?

 

Thanks,



Daniel