What can I do about a wall switch for an overhead light if the socket doesn't have a neutral wire and the switch does?

This doesn’t make sense. The ground wire is the bare-naked copper wire that’s a little thinner than the others. In addition to a ground wire, if any, there must be two regular insulated wires attached to the socket, usually some combination of black, white, or red.

It doesn’t matter which is hot and which is neutral, just that there are two wires to the socket, neither of which is a ground. (What’s confusing is that neutral is sometimes erroneously referred to as ground in analogy to automotive or appliance circuits.)

The switch likewise should have at least two regular conductors besides any ground wire, though 3-way switches have hookups for 3 wires plus ground. Switches normally switch hot, though they can be wired to switch neutral. For lights it shouldn’t matter.

Does any of this fit?

The wires to the bulb are only white and black?
The the wiring is probably 50 or more years old.

Just connect the white wire to the “silver” colored terminal and the black to the brass colored.

The light is a timer. So that when I leave the room the light will turn off in my absence. Currently, the light just keeps making the loop continuously defeating the purpose of having a timer. It seems to not be a defect in the switch since I’ve tried two other of the same switches with the same results.

This had a switch in place before you decided to replace it with a timer switch?
In that case the old switch had two wires connected to it, just connect the same two wires to the two terminals on the new switch.
How is your setup different from that ?
I don’t understand why the switch should have any connection to neutral, or to ground (unless it’s got a GFI circuit ground_fault_interrupter built in ??) The switch should be an in interruption on the hot line, same color coming into and out of it.

Speaking greek to me. Three wires in the wall, three wires on switch. Ones in wall are black, white, copper. Ones on switch are red, black, neutral(as per GE). I hooked the black to black, the red to white, and the neutral to the copper ground.

Right now, I’m going to unplug the ground, and see if that has any effect. Problem is not that light doesn’t come on, problem is timer doesn’t stay shut off. It just keeps spinning round and round.

What do you mean by “socket”? If you mean the box that is in the wall that the switch is in, then I’m guessing it’s a metal one if its that old? And the wires are inside a metal conduit inside the walls and attic ? If that’s the case then the steel box as well as the conduit are what’s grounded so, really the only thing you can do I think is to run a jumper from the ground green screw on the switch to the metal box using a tek screw to get your ground. The metal tubing that encased the wires is called “EMT” ( Electrical Metallic Tubing) and serves as the ground system so thats why there isn’t a separate ground wire. One of the pitfalls of that setup is that every single connection of that tubing has to be intact for the ground to be in effect but sometimes workmen at a later time doing repairs in attics would carelessly step on these and knock the connections apart. If that happens then you loose the ground. Often times the damage is not even realized so it goes unattended for decades sometimes.

I’m an industrial electrician, and I only get into house wiring occasionally (on the side) but I could probably help you since you can’t do industrial wiring without knowledge of the basics anyways.

I’m somewhat confused by your question. I’m assuming you’re talking about a general toggle (single pole) switch, with the standard on/off markings. I’m not sure if you have any three or four way switches involved with this circuit, but three and four ways do not come with on/off markings, and they use traveler wires (the conductors that are directly involved in the switching function, but not the commons themselves), and the common terminals (power supply wire and wire out to the load) are usually black, the traveler terminals are usually a color other than black. I’m not going to far with the three or four way setup since I’m not even sure you have these in this circuit.

Switches usually don’t come with conductors, they (switches) only control the flow of current. Switches are not loads, but devices. Well I read above and you had mentioned it is a timer switch so never mind. I’m not sure what you mean by the ‘socket’, and I’m still not sure of your setup here enough to help you. You could use the chasis or grounding conductor as a ‘neutral’. However this is against NEC, and I’m even more certain that this would violate the even more stricter local codes as well. When you use the ground as a neutral (I’ve seen this setup alot unfortunately in various factories) everything that is grounded becomes ‘hot’. The reason why you don’t get shocked by the grounds/chasis (the neutral is generally tapped together with the earth ground) is because the splice itself is located inside of the panel right at the earth ground, so the current flowing from the neutral will take the path of least resistance to earth ground.

Make sure you purchased the right timer, with the right voltage. Try reading the diagram that should have came with the timer. Also, do you have (or know how to use) a multimeter or voltage tester? From my experience with industrial timers, they usually use two ‘hot’ wires of the same potential (for 120 volt timers), one hot wire is used for powering the timer (timer motor) itself, this is why a timer in this situation generally uses a neutral, again to power the timer motor. The other hot leg is used for switching purposes, usually going out to the load. A typical single pole switch (like the one you originally had) would use only two wires, while the neutral would bypass the switch to directly feed the load (in this case your light).

What about the wires running from the light to the switch? How many conductors do you have there? I hate giving this type of advice without having you test each wire with a multimeter, but try this: Find out which wire on the timer is your common, it will either be the black or red wire, and the timer diagram should tell you which one is which. Your common (either the black or red wire here) needs to be connected to the wire that would normally be hot, going out to the light itself. This wire would have been one of your original switching wires. The hot leg that supplies power to the switch (the black you’re likely talking about above being in the wall) should be connected to the timer itself (either the red or black wire on your timer switch). Hook the neutral on in your switch box directly to the nuetral on your timer (white to white). Don’t use the ground here for anything, except for grounding the chasis (lighting fixture or junction box that the light is installed from). Make sure your neutral in the switch box is spliced with both the white wire going to the timer, and the wire that you’ll be using as the neutral going out from the switch box to your light itself. I know what your problem is here, and it is a simple one for me, but it is just so hard for me to explain to you. If you’re not sure of what I’m writing here just ask me below here. I’m probably the only electrician on fluther.

It sounds like you have a switch that is meant for, say, a hallway that has two switches controlling the same light. My stairway has this.
Don’t use the bare copper wire. Connect the black and white wires to the other two posts.

Ok, paradox25. I have a hole in he wall that used to have your standard up and down light switch attached to it. In that hole there are three wires. A black one. A white one. A copper one.

The original light switch is being replaced with a GE model 15069. This switch is a 60 minute timer. The timer is set up with a round timer setting knob. Beneath the knob is a sliding switch which has three positions, on, off, and timer. When set to on, light. When set to off, no light. When set to timer, light when knob is on a time setting, and then the light turns off when it runs out of time, BUT then it keeps going and turns on and starts counting down from the 60th minute spot on the knob (making a full circle instead of staying off)

That’s as clear as I can state it.

The black wire is Hot and shroud go to the hot connection on the switch (usually a brass colored screw or color coded black or red). The white is neutral, and should go to the silver screw or, if color coded, to white. The bare copper wire is the ground wire and if there is a connection on the switch labeled GND it should attach there. Light sockets don’t have ground wires, so the ground is superfluousness past the switch.

Seems to be fixed. I reversed the main wires. I put black on the white, and red on the black. The timer shuts off and does not continue to rotate any longer. I still have the neutral hooked to ground.

Ok?

@ETpro It is a timer switch. The timer needs a neutral because of the electronics (or motor that operates as a timer). He needs to have the common wire (not the neutral) on the timer spliced directly to the wire going out to the light. He needs to use the wire supplying the power in the switch box to go directly to the timer. The nuetral (like I’ve said above) in the switch box needs to be spliced to both the timer white wire and to the wire going out to the light. I have no way of knowing whether the red or black wire on the timer is the common without the timer diagram.

@Ltryptophan Neutral and ground are two separate things. In a 120V wire with black/white/green or copper black is hot, white is neutral and green or copper is ground. If you have a black, red and white, then it’s a 220/240V circuit. The black and red are both 110/120V hot lines of opposite phases, and the white is neutral.

You’ve got 3 wires in the wall box: Black, white, and bare copper. The black and white, when connected to each other, switch line (hot) to load. Most likely neither is truly a neutral even if it’s white. The bare copper is without doubt ground. It should be connected to to other grounds if possible, but to nothing else.

It sounds like you connected the timer’s black-red leads to the black-white wires in the wall box, and it works. So far so good. I’m concerned about also connecting “neutral to ground,” which is normally unsafe. @Ltryptophan, please describe the “neutral” wire on the timer switch that you’re connecting to ground?

@gasman I looked further up in the post, and @Ltryptophan confirms the wiring in the wall is 120V Black/White/Copper. White is neutral and black is hot. The copper wire should go to the ground on the switch if it has one. This may be a screw labeled Gnd. or it may be painted green. Black and white should go to Black and Red, and in all likelihood the switch won’t care which goes where. But it it cares, just reverse them.

@ETpro I think we basically agree, except that a white wire inside the wall probably isn’t a neutral if it’s routed to a switch. (Clearly the switch isn’t connecting hot to neutral.) The question is, what’s the 3rd wire leading from the timer? I hope it’s green!

@gasman The switch should be connecting hot to the socket, and feeding neutral back from the socket to the mains. And if I am reading @Ltryptophan correctly, the switch has a green and the bare copper ground wire from the wall wiring is going to it. Sounds right.

The neutral wire on the switch is white and I’ve attached it to ground. It’s working!

Am I putting electricity into ground?

From looking at various types of timers that you can purchase from Wal-mart or Lowe’s, it looks like the manufacturers are using the black wire on the timer as the hot (to power both the timer and light), the red is the wire that you would use to hook up to the wire that is going out to the light fixture itself (just like with the old setup) and the white wire is obviously meant to be spliced with your switch box neutral.

1) Your old switch would have two wires that were connected to it, one that supplies power to your switch (feed), the other wire would be the switching wire that goes to your light. (there should be more than 3 wires in your switch box, since you need at least 2 extra to go out to your light)

2) The wire that supplies the power (feed) to the switch would connect to the black wire on your timer.

3) The other wire that would have been on your old switch, the one which goes out to your light itself, would connect to the red wire on your timer.

4) This should leave only the neutral wire in your switch box. Like I’d said above, this time you will need to connect the neutral to the white wire on the switch (in this situation because of the timer electronics). Make sure your neutrals are all spliced together here.

You could leave the neutral to ground connection alone here, and I don’t think for such a small load that anything bad will happen. Since the connections are simple and the wires you need are already supplied at the switch box I would just make the connection to neutral like I’d described above anyways (assuming that the white you had described really is being used as a neutral that is).

Based on my experience with US residential wiring, there might not be a neutral wire in a wall box wired only for a switch—switches don’t normally draw power & often have just a single black/white pair to/from the switch excluding neutral. Best to pull a new neutral wire from the nearest source to the box. You could connect to ground, as @Ltryptophan has done, and maybe not have a problem (as @Paradox25 says), but “it ain’t kosher.” Any GFCIs upstream will detect a ground fault & shut down. Also ground wires are not designed to carry normal load current as neutrals are. Neutrals are often a few volts above ground, even if not at a lethal potential.

Fwiw they make mechanical timer switches that draw no current and require no neutral hook-up.