OT: Residential electrical help Options

[flipb]

I replaced a chandelier in my house today and it didn't go quite as smoothly as planned. Help me figure out how badly I screwed things up.

Our house was built in 1959, but the wiring to this fixture appeared newer. There was a chandelier on a dimmer switch in our dining room, and I bought a new one to replace it. The new one weighs less than the old one, so I wasn't worried about the fixture box holding it - and the mechanical side of the install went fine.

I was expecting it to be simple enough... to find Hot, Neutral, and Ground inside the fixture box. Discovering that it was more complicated, I tried to wire the new one the same way I found the old one wired.

Inside the box were FOUR sets of hot & neutral. The way I found it wired to the old chandelier (and the way it's now wired to the new chandelier) is as follows:

1. 3 Black wires and one White wire were connected with a wire nut.
2. A Black, a white, and a lead to the chandlier are connected in a wire nut
3. A white, another white, and the other lead to the chandelier are connected via a third wire nut

I've also tied the grounds together, and I'm fairly sure that's done properly.

Once I had it wired, the first time I tried to turn on the light, it blew the circuit breaker. I decided that I must've accidentally reversed the white wires from B and C, above, so I switched them and tried again.

Now the fixture works, but the dimmer doesn't dim... as soon as it comes on, the bulbs are at full brightness. The other strange thing is that until I installed a light bulb in the chandelier, nothing else on that circuit was getting power. I can tell because the Oven is on the same circuit and the display was blank until I put the first bulb into the chandelier.

Did I blow the dimmer switch when I had it miswired? Or do I have it miswired now, preventing the dimmer from working? And why are there four sets of wires coming through this box?

Need help from any electrical geniuses to determine whether I can repair this myself or if it's time to call an electrician.

Thanks.

Flip

[ww914]

The simplest way to figure what you have is to isolate all wires, then with a tester find out which wire is the feed into the ceiling box, that is, which is the hot one. One will be the hot wire, probably black. The other black ones will feed on to something else, like the oven display light or other receptacles or whatever.

The lamp and switch wiring are pretty simple. From the hot wire you found, one of the black ones will go to the switch. A white wire will be the return from the switch and will really be hot, not a neutral when the switch is on. There will be no neutral from the switch. So, the wire wire coming back from the switch will be the hot, switched wire from the switch. The white neutral wire will come from the ceiling box and go to the lamp.

Once you figure out which is the feed into the ceiling box, just tie the other black wires to it so they can go on feeding other stuff. The neutrals will all tie together. Sounds like you've got the ground figured out. If this doesn't make sense, email me and I will draw a diagram.