I tried to change a light fixture in my house. I didn't turn off the circuit breaker just the switch.?

Question

Now the power is off to all the sockets in the room, although the circuit breaker hasn't gone off and shows that power is good? What did I do wrong and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

If you didn't know enough to trip the breaker for that switch before you started, call the professionals, you don't want to get hurt or hurt someone else.

Answer 2

call an electrician, you could cause a short and start a fire or even worse electricute someone

Answer 3

are you SURE the circuit breaker didn't trip because you may have shorted it? When tripped, they do NOT flip all the way over-only partway and some circuit breakers you can't tell by looking-only by running your fingers down the breaker bars to feel it's out of place.

You have to go to the main panel, and flip the circuit breaker ALL THE WAY to one side and then ALL THE WAY back to the normal 'on' position to make sure it is reset.

MANY rooms are done with one circuit feeding everything in that room...stupid way to do things. We have always made sure rooms had two separate lines-ceiling lights on one, room outlets on the other. So if one line tripped, you could still have lights plugged in the outlets or turned on in the ceiling to see things!

NEVER NEVER NEVER change a light fixture without flipping the circuit breaker...many 'ceiling light fixtures' will have LIVE wires to the ceiling and a 'dog leg' wire down to the switch...now illegal I think...but it means you ALWAYS have live wire in that electrical box up there!

Answer 4

Sounds like your switch was backfed... I.E.  - You have one cable going down to your switch, containing a black and a white wire.  One carries down constant power, while the other is for your light.

The fix.... take your light back down and your switch out of the wall to see if this is the case.  If so.... you did have constant power in the light fixture box, even with the switch off.  You need to find out which cable is actucally your constant hot.  When you do tie that black to the one going down to the switch.  Then you should be left with two white wires, one will be your neutral which came from your constant hot cable, hook your white wire from your fixture here.  The other white wire should be coming from your switch, carring power back up to your light.  Tie this wire to the black or red wire on your new fixture.  

You could also have a combination... black, red and white cable.  You just have to see how the switch is wired up vs. the light.

Hope I helped.

Answer 5

I know what you did haha.The same thing happened to me when i installed a ceiling fan.Check the ground wires for the light fixture.

Answer 6

You mis-wired things.  Lets figure our what you mean.  A socket is for a light bub.  Are you saying that the receptacles in the room do not work?  Do they work with switch in the "on" position?  Can't quite figure out how you managed to disconnect the receptacles without getting a pretty bad surprise.    

Answer 7

make sure your breaker has not tripped and you just can't tell.  Flip it over and then back again and see if that helps.

Answer 8

you probably wired it backwards

Answer 9

my guess would be you failed to connect the main white wire running thru the box you worked on...one way or the other it's a bad connection in that location...

Answer 10

You must not have spliced it back together correctly. The only thing that changed is you changing the light. Pull the light back down and check the connections. Make sure they are tight and its color for color. Black to black and white to white. How do you know there is no power. Did you check it with a meter or are your bulbs, or fixture bad?