Electrical Troubleshooting

TIMES INT'L

Welcome back to another DIY…this time around we will look at some electrical troubleshooting again but on lights-bulbs and fixtures, ceiling mounted, recessed, wall mounted and the switches to go with them. Basic bulb troubleshooting is quite simple, my friend used to say that electrical problems are hard to find and easy to fix whereas mechanical ones are easy to find and hard to fix, I think he is right…
Anyways, aside from the obvious safety rules we have to follow, these fixes are a piece of cake. So…as a reminder, make sure you turn off the breakers to whatever circuit you are working on, use well insulated tools and use them properly, work smart…you know the drill.
Here’s a neat little table you can clip out and paste or file somewhere…this is very handy when you have to do a quick fix because you’re in the dark…
The checks are in a good order to follow, it’s a smart move to troubleshoot eliminating the simple obvious things first and then work your way down to the harder, more technical stuff.
If you can use a digital multimeter, then you can check for continuity in the circuit, which means that you will be checking if the circuit has any breaks in it. You should read a high resistance when the switch is off and a very low resistance when it is on. If the resistance is high when the switch is on then that means that a wire is loose/burnt out/cut somewhere in the circuit and needs to be replaced.

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