Wiring to an outdoor lamp post.

18 years ago

Here is my problem...I have an existing lamp post outside that trips the circuit breaker. There is no other switch in the house that powers on/off the lamp beside the breaker. I was told by a neighbor that the previous owner put the post in himself while the house was being built and before the concrete for the driveway and walk was poured. It does'nt look like conduit was used and I think a indoor grade wire was used. When I took the lamp post apart I discovered that the hot wire(black) was shorted to the bare ground wire. The neutral is not(when disconnected from ground at the breaker panel of course). My question is could I use the white wire as my hot since it is not shorted to the ground and use the black wire as the neutral? I know this is not code but I don't want to rip up alot of concrete to fix this. Any advice would be appreciated....The wife really likes the lamp post as it lights up our driveway.

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Comments (2)

mikie_gw
18 years ago
Put in a new direct burial rated wife. UF - You can do it.
AC current goes back and forth in hot and neutral.

You wouldn't want to run out some saturday morning barefooted to discover your legs collapsing under you, and find yourself laying next to some kid with a death grip on a baseball in his hand.

I jetted a one inch pvc for a sprinkler system under a two car driveway, with a 14/2g UF taped to it hoping for a post light feed. Pretty quick and easy. Took two tries. That was a 30 yr old house with a huge maple tree next to the driveway that I thought for sure I roots were going to create difficulties.

You can try to neatly tape the wire and pull a new back under your driveway using the old. Work the old back and forth a bit from each side of the driveway to make yourself an easy pull that wont nick-up the new wires.
thewgp
18 years ago
"Put in a new direct burial rated wife."

LMAO, nice typo! :)

But yeah, it's not as hard as you might think to get a new wire under a driveway if you have reasonable accessibility...
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