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Caught a hot neutral on a 3-way install in Phoenix last week
I was wiring up a simple 3-way switch setup in a house built in 1978. Thought I had the power killed but my tick tracer lit up on the neutral wire when I touched it. Turns out someone had tied the switch leg into the neutral bundle in the box about 20 years ago. Took me an hour of tracing wires to figure out where the phantom voltage was coming from. Has anyone else run into bootleg neutrals in your older job sites?
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theac633mo ago
The 1970s houses in Phoenix are notorious for that kind of mess, especially with the old cloth wiring they used. The hot neutral you described is a bootleg ground situation but it's actually a bootleg neutral since the switch leg got tied into the neutral bundle. That phantom voltage you measured is just capacitive coupling from the live wire running next to it, not a real load. I've seen more than a few of those old boxes where someone mixed up the travelers or the common wire too. You probably already know this but your tick tracer can light up from that ghost voltage even when the circuit is dead, so a multimeter is the only way to be sure.
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hollyl453mo ago
Oh come on, that phantom voltage is still real enough to give you a shock, so acting like it doesn't matter is just dangerous.
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