Electrical engineering guides, research studies and papers

The Complete Guide to

Electrical Wiring
Understanding Electrical Circuits
An electrical circuit is a continuous loop. Household circuits carry electricity from the
main service panel, throughout the house, and back to the main service panel.
Several switches, receptacles, light fixtures, or appliances may be connected to a
single circuit.

The Complete Guide to Electrical Wiring (Current with 2014–2017 Electrical Codes) by
Black+Decker
Current enters a circuit loop on hot wires and returns along neutral wires. These wires
are color coded for easy identification.

Hot wires are black or red, and neutral wires are white or light gray. For safety, all
modern circuits include a bare copper or green insulated grounding wire. The
grounding wire conducts current in the event of a ground fault and helps reduce the
chance of severe electrical shock.
The service panel also has a bonding wire connected to a metal water pipe and a
grounding wire connected to a metal grounding rod, buried underground, or to another
type of grounding electrode.
Electric circuits of lighting

If a circuit carries too much current, it can overload. A fuse or a circuit breaker protects
each circuit in case of overloads. Current returns to the service panel along a neutral
circuit wire. Current then leaves the house on a large neutral service wire that returns
it to the utility transformer.

Grounding and Polarization

Electricity always seeks to return to its source and complete a continuous circuit.
Contrary to popular belief, electricity will take all available return paths to its source,
not just the path of lowest resistance.

In a household wiring system, this return path is provided  by white neutral wires that

return current to the main service panel. From the service panel, current returns

along the uninsulated neutral service wire to a power pole transformer.

You will see the terms grounding and bonding used in this and other books about
electricity. These terms are often misunderstood. You should understand the
difference to safely work on electrical circuits.
LEFT: Normal current flow – Current enters the electrical box along a black hot wire
and then returns to the service panel along a white neutral wire. RIGHT: Current is
detoured by a loose wire in contact with the metal box. The grounding wire and
bonded metal conduit pick it up and channel it back to the main service panel, where
the overcurrent device is tripped, stopping further flow of current. Most current in the
bonding and ground system flows back to the transformer; some may trickle out
through the copper that leads to the grounding node.

Bonding connects the non-current-carrying metal parts of the electrical system, such
as metal boxes and metal conduit, in a continuous low-resistance path back to the
main service panel. If this metal becomes energized (a ground fault), current travels
on the bonded metal and quickly increases to an amount that trips the circuit breaker
or blows the fuse.

The dead circuit alerts people to a problem.

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How to Control a Light Bulb using Single Way

or One-Way Switch?
How to Wire a Light Switch? Controlling a Lamp by Single Way Switch
In today’s basic home electrical wiring installation tutorial, we will show how to wire a
light switch to control a light point using one way or single way switch.

We will use the basic SPST (Single Pole Single Throw) switch in this tutorial to control
a lamp / bulb from a single location.
Good to Know: Single Pole, Single Throw (SPST) switch is known as Two way switch,
toggle switch or Light switch having three terminals (two for lines and one for ground) in
North America (US – NEC). While it is known as Two Way switch (having two terminals)
in the Europe, UK and IEC following countries.
Before go in details, we have to show the basic construction and operating
mechanism of single way switch which is shown in fig below:
Below is a simple step by step tutorial with schematic and wiring diagram which
shows how to wire a light switch to control the bulb/lamp from single place with
the help of one-way or single way switch?
Related Wiring Diagrams:
 How to Wire 4-Way Switch (NEC) & Intermediate Switch as 3-Way (IEC)?
 How to Wire Single Pole, Single Throw (SPST) as 2-Way & 1-Way Switch? IEC & NEC
 How to Wire Single Pole, Double Throw (SPDT) as 3-Way & 2-Way Switch? IEC & NEC
Requirements:
 Single Way Switch (SPST = Single Pole Single Throw) x 1 No
 Lamp (Light Bulb) x 1 No
 Short pieces of cables x 3 No

Procedure:
This is just like a series circuit i.e. all the components are connected in series. Just
connect the Neutral wire directly to the light bulb and then connect the light bulb to the
switch through middle wire. And then connect the live wire to the switch as shown in fig
below. Fig given below shows the basic connection of light switch and their position i.e.
when the switch is OFF, the circuit acts like an open circuit and the bulb won’t glow. To
switch on the bulb, switch S1 must be closed to complete the circuit and glow the light
bulb.
In fig below, schematic and wiring diagrams of light switches are shown which shows how to
wire a light switch?
Also note that home wire colors may vary according to different areas. In addition,
always use and connect the earth wire (direct naked wire to switches, and electrical
appliances from earth link in the distribution board to reduce the risk of electric shock
and hazard) which is not shown in the figures above.
The following wiring diagrams shows how to wire a light bulb to a light switch according
to NEC and IEC.
Click image to enlarge
Good to know:
 Switches and fuses must be connected through Line (Live, Phase or Hot) wire.
 Switches connection in series is not a prefer way to wire home appliances. Parallel or series-
parallel wiring method is more reliable.
 Less wires and cables are required in this kind of wiring connection.