I live in a condo and Im trying to wire a new light. When I wire it, it stays on constantly despite hitting the switch.The wiring Im dealing with is as follows.At the switch on the wall, there is a red wire, brown wire connected to the switch. A green wire connected to the box in the walll behind the switch.In the ceiling there is a brown wire, green wire, and a white wire wrapped with an unstripped red wire.Coming from the fixture are black, white, green.Ive tried connected black-brown, white-white green-green but the light stays on no matter what. Also tried white-brown, black-white, green to bolt. Still the same thing happens.Not sure what to do.
Get a volt meter and check the voltage in each wire with the switch on and the switch off, will tell you which wire is getting power from the switch. This wire will then attach to your black. I would try black to red, white to brown and green to green.
the red and brown are probably positive (red) and the brown (neg) The green is probably a ground wire. You can go to the hardware store. Home Depot or Sears or Ace etc and get a small tester and then touch it to the wires. It will come with instructions and you can also ask the sales person in the electrical dept.
Assuming (and one never should) that the red wire at the switch is actually stripped and around one of the two terminal screws, then it should be correct, previously this ceiling box must have been being used for possibly a smoke detector or anything that they wanted to remain hot... but you should be able to (and either turn off the breaker, remove the fuse, or at least make certain that the switch is in the off position if you can, and look closely, often they get installed upside down, but dont confuse this with three and four way light circuits, lol) strip this end of the red wire at the ceiling box and wire nut green to green, white to white, and the remaining black (should be) from the light fixture to the red you stripped, this should solve the problem for you. Michael
