Receptical won't work

[bucs012]

Some of you know I am new to wirng and have been helping me.

We just moved into this house a month ago. There was an electrical box that has nothing in it, but a ground wire, white wire and black wire coming into it. No receptical.

Today I put a receptical in it, but could only hook up the TOP outlet. Black to the bronze terminal and white to the silver and copper/brass wire to green screw for grounding. I did nothing with the bottom receptical since I only have 2 wires into the box. I left the bottom 2 terminals unwired.

I turned the power back on and figured the TOP receptical should work?????neither of the recepticals work.........

Do I HAVE to have BOTH recepticals wired up to make it work? If so, how do I do that since I only have the black/white wires coming into the box, but I have 4 terminal screws- 2 bronze and 2 silver.

 

[tfi racing]

What you did is correct,if you look closely at the receptacle you will see there is a small tab that connects the top and bottom for you.Use a meter/tester to see if there is power at that outlet,chances are that wire is not connected at the other end,that is where you need to look.

 

[bucs012]

To double check. Can I also use my voltmeter (you guys taught me how to use yesterday) to test for power? Would I put the red prong on the black wire and my black prong on the white wire from the outlet?

 

[porschedude996TT]

Your confusing DC power and AC power. With AC (Alternating Current) since the voltage is cycling between 120v to 0 ans then back to 120volts. The polarity of the two test probes does not matter. Make sure the volt meter is in the proper scale meaning "AC". Either probe to the line side or black wire and the other side to the white wire. You can also check the ground to see if it is hooked up properly. Touch one probe to the black wire and the other to the ground. It should read about 120v. Then try the white wire and the ground wire. There should be no voltage between them. That is not entirely true, if you are using a digital meter you may see a couple of Milli-volts between the ground and the neutral (white) wire.

 

[Kevin54]

Some of you know I am new to wirng and have been helping me.

We just moved into this house a month ago. There was an electrical box that has nothing in it, but a ground wire, white wire and black wire coming into it. No receptical.

Today I put a receptical in it, but could only hook up the TOP outlet. Black to the bronze terminal and white to the silver and copper/brass wire to green screw for grounding. I did nothing with the bottom receptical since I only have 2 wires into the box. I left the bottom 2 terminals unwired.

I turned the power back on and figured the TOP receptical should work?????neither of the recepticals work.........

Do I HAVE to have BOTH recepticals wired up to make it work? If so, how do I do that since I only have the black/white wires coming into the box, but I have 4 terminal screws- 2 bronze and 2 silver.

As TFI stated, you did it correctly. Between the screws you will see that the top IS hooked to the bottom unless the receptacle has been modified. If you can not get the outlet to work, look somewhere for a switch on the wall that you do not know what it controls. There is a reason they pulled the receptacle out.
Check with a volt/ohm meter to see if there is power anywhere. And are you absolutely it is a place for an outlet and not a place for a switch? And it could be the fact that it was a GFCI outlet and the previous owner decided to take them when they left.
Where is the box located? Bathroom, kitchen, garage, bedroom, etc?

 

[bucs012]

answer to last post- All I know is it is at the same level on the floor is the rest of the outlets to plug things in. I took the cover off (he had a bank one over it) and there are 3 wires in there. Black, White and copper. They all had knurls on them.

It just happens to be in a spot we REALLY need a receptical so I put one in, hoping it would work.........I did what you guys have told me and went to Lowes, yesterday and bought me a 3 way ground test thing you plug into outlest to check with the 3-4 lights on it. I also bought an electrical prong to check other things........Yet to open them up to test any further.

There are a few switches on the wall that we have yet to figure out what they work. I tried those too and nothing worked. I will probably end up yanking those out too, to make sure they are hooked up....Ha! Maybe they are not, maybe one of the switches are bad. Maybe the wire is NOT even hooked up? I will have to check all this out this week.

We moved in this house about a month ago so.........This is the same guy that has run cable/satellite coaxil everywhere in the house. Direct TV came and half of the coaxil wire he ran was DEAD........He also has a lot of phone jack lines installed. Most of them work............I think he must have been bored..................