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

[stugray]

I didnt read all of the posts and try to put everything together, but I have a few things to say:

1 - Sometimes a ceiling fan, light, or outlet is used as a junction box for other circuits. I have verified that an outlet is off after turning off the breaker that feeds that outlet just to find that $HIT in THAT BOX IS STILL HOT!. That's why electricians use an AC power detecting "wand" that you "wave" at a wire you are about to work on and it tells you if it is hot.

2 - If you had other circuits only work once you put a bulb into the fixture, you have placed multiple circuits in series when they used to be in parallel.

3 - You people giving electrical advice for how to wire a house are NUTS! You have no idea what kind of liability exists trying to help someone via a thread such as this one. I am nervous giving someone help when I am right there looking at it, and I am an EE. I will wire my own house (and have, and garage, and welder, etc.) but hesitate whenever giving someone else advice, because I am not certified to do so.

Other than stating facts (as above), I would not touch this one with a 10 ft. (isolated) pole.

Stu