Wall switches.

[arctictom]

Check, ground and common at the box make sure everything is koser, I have seen some really bad wiring, read dangerous , over the years , hot grounds, no ground (when that happens things behave badly because they are hunting for ground ) , and neutral/common used as hot .
Sounds like you solved your issue though.

[blackeagle603]

Preach it Brother Tom.

I can testify to that too. In this house alone I've spent days and days dealing with every variation of screwup in wiring. The original wiring was done well great in 1962. All the add-on work after was a trainwreck. The last owner was a cheapskate who used illegals who lived in the shed down the hill to wire/jury rig everything. There was _a_ lot _of_add-on and mods in 40+ years. Boxes with hot neutrals; mystery circuits with switched hots that stayed hot no matter; hot mystery wiring discovered unboxed & plastered over in walls I opened up for remodel; multiple outlets that sparked/exploded out in my face as soon as I unscrewed the outlet and started to pull the outlet out to look at the makeup wiring, etc. Don't get me started on the irrigation system work those guys did with duct tape and electrical conduit...

At some point in the ongoing cleanup of wiring, I realized the electrical safety issues were bigger than my attention span. Finally hired an electrician to go through a couple areas and completely cleanup every box and everything visible in the attic, do lots of disconnect and rewire work, add a sub in the garage/granny flat to pull all new wiring for that end of the house. Of course that left me a fair bit of drywall/plasterboard touchup when he was done. That was a couple or three grand of work at the end of it all.

[Denis]

I am just completing rewiring a whole house from the 1960s - the electrical system had been inspected and condemned, so everything had to be replaced. That was necessary, as the former owner had a penchant for using hi-fi speaker wire for connecting anything electrical, including 500W halogen lamps! I don't know how many kilometres of cable I have pulled. Next week I'll be fitting the distribution panel, circuit breakers and wiring up the sockets (I hope).

[MarkD]

The electrician who worked on my kitchen remodel a few years ago told me this story:

Guy buys a new (to him) house. There's a light on the front porch with a 15 watt bulb in it. Decided it needs a bigger bulb, removes the 15 and install a 100. Flips the switch, hear's zzzzzPOP and light goes out. Calls electrician. The socket had been wired with antenna wire, the stuff with two thin wires and the plastic strip between. It worked for a 15 watt bulb, but 100 watts fried it. The electrician said he was lucky, if he hadn't put in such a big bulb it might have lasted long enough to start a fire.

There are things I won't mess with because I know I don't know enough, and electricity (beyond things like replacing switches and such) is among those things.

[Precision]

long story of why... but I was a party to doing some reworking on a friend's new (to her) home purchase. The front door light wasn't working, so I pulled it out and checked the filament. It was burnt out so popped in another one. ZZZ- POP and it fried. Quick check and that filament is busted too. Flip the switch off and go hunting down a short in the line or whatever.

Turns out some assjack has jumpered TWO 110 / 15A circuits together in the breaker box with an inch of 14ga romex. This circuit runs to the electric dryer (with appropriate wiring) and through a 14ga extension cord with both ends cut off, to the exterior front door light.

After finding that, we killed all the circuits and turned them on one at a time and tracked them all down. Found another jumpered "240" line running out into the back yard. It had a bare at the end of the romex with about 2 inches of exposed copper on each wire. Luckily the breaker was in the off position as the terminus sat in a low spot which tended to collect water.

[HTRN]

Lemme get this straight - people run 18g ZIP CORD.. FOR ELECTRICAL SERVICE?

[arctictom]

I have seen 18 gage lamp cord used to wire a house, and w
ith no ground for the primary service, very exciting.

[HTRN]

Christ, and I thought the New York supplemental code just made good sense - armored cable in the walls with metal boxes, with the whole shebang grounded, and a ground wire run to boot. Anything exposed gets run in EMT.

[HTRN]

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people that do this?

[blackeagle603]

I've seen zipcord run in grooves cut in drywall, run up and around a wall and taped/mudded over into the drywall surface. Makes a really cool cut burn line when it gets too hot -- sort of like a poor mans det cord.