Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Garage wiring - something to watch out for

I just finished running a new circuit for some ceiling LED shop lights. They're the corded type that just plug into an outlet. I wired in a switched outlet to plug them into. The walls & ceiling are open so at least I was able get to the studs to run the cable through them. It's about 30' from the outlet to the switch. I got it all wired, checked for juice with a test light, plugged them in, and hit the switch. Nothing.
To bypass the tale of my searching for the problem...a volt meter revealed that I was only getting 94v at the outlet. The LED lights won't come on at that voltage. They need 115v. I got 120v by testing from the hot to the ground but not to the neutral. To double check, I used a piece of automotive wire to bypass the neutral from the switch to the outlet and it worked fine. If I was using incandescents, they would have come on but wouldn't have got as bright as they should. Likely flourescents wouldn't have come on either.
This was new 14g wire from an old unused roll of romex. Apparently there's a manufacturing defect somewhere in the neutral wire that cuts the voltage.

I just posted this as a reminder that test lights aren't the universal cure-all. They'll tell you if there's juice there but not how much.

More likely than a manufacturing defect is damage done while installing... a nail/staple through the neutral wire, for example. The problem needs to be found and replaced. That is the sort of thing that causes fires.

Other possibilities are loose connections, especially if you wire-nutted big bundles of wires, or did not get things right in the outlets and fed power and neutrals through the outlets rather than pigtailing them.

That would be my guess too as far as the OP's issue being related to the wire failure. I have ran 100's of thousands of feet of commercial and residential wire and I don't think I can recall ever seeing a manufactures defect in the field. But am NOT saying that it could never happen....

More likely than a manufacturing defect is damage done while installing... a nail/staple through the neutral wire, for example. The problem needs to be found and replaced. That is the sort of thing that causes fires.

Other possibilities are loose connections, especially if you wire-nutted big bundles of wires, or did not get things right in the outlets and fed power and neutrals through the outlets rather than pigtailing them.

Do you have enough wire to run a test wire beside the original and test throughput? It is very strange to have that problem and not be able to find the issue pretty quickly.

samthedog most likely has hit it. Sounds like you have a Neutral that is not making good contact (the white wire), and the phase imbalance is showing up on that phase (leg). Check your connection at the neutral buss in the panel and at any connections along the way, especially that new switch.

Is the garage separate from the main house and it is served as a sub panel. If so you may have loss the neutral going to the garage and have the issue in the whole building, but this would most likely have shown up with some lights being dim and others bright. If this is the case it will be obvious when you test phase to neutral at the panel per "samthedog's" suggestion.

It sounds like you may have neutral floating because of a phase inbalance.

Go the source with a meter and check phase voltage between hot and ground and hot and neutral. They both should be 120 volts.

Also, in my experience, 96 volts or less can indicate a tripped GFI breaker on the circuit.

Best

Sam the Dog