wiring a dimmer swith for a light in house

[yellowbox]

stupid question...
when you install a dimmer switch for a household light , say bathroom , is it possible to wire it up wrong and lights still work, or would it trip a breaker/ not work at all, or work and possibly overheat
i am replacing the existing dimming swith in bathroom and when i took old unit out there was a loose wire , not sure where it went and do not want a fire
i have instaled new switch and it works , just concerned if it is correct

 

[mrb]

depending on how you miswired it, any of the things you mentioned could happen. Are you saying when you removed the old dimmer, you had a wire in the box that wasnt hooked up to anything?

 

[yellowbox]

depending on how you miswired it, any of the things you mentioned could happen. Are you saying when you removed the old dimmer, you had a wire in the box that wasnt hooked up to anything?

when the old switch was pulled out of the wall 1 wire came out of one of the colored wire caps not sure which one of the 2 caps ....
the new switch has a green ground wire and 2 black wires
the wiring in the wall has 3 black wires and 1 copper wire
so i connected black wire to black wire and the other black wires together
it is the 1 wire that came unconnected from old dimmer that i am unsure were it should go ...
i have it all connected and it has been on for 2 hrs with no signs of overheating , just want it to be safe is all
i thought maybe it was a wire left uncovered when house was built but when i tried dimmer without that wire it would not work

 

[motofly196]

Let me make sure I read your post correct. Are you saying that there is one copper wire unhooked? Is it a bare copper wire...no plastic coating on it? That's your ground wire....it goes to the green wire in the switch.

Scott

 

[mrb]

to be 100% safe, i would you suggest to get an electrican out there to trace it out. For example, if you had three black wires -two to the supply side and one on the load side, and you moved one of the wires from the supply side to the load side you could now be supplying anything from an outlet to a smoke detector to who knows what from the dimmer which could cause problems down the road.

 

[kbs2244]

Get some one that knows what they are looking at.
But I would not be suprised if there was a wire pulled for an exhaust fan that was never used.

 

[Big N8]

Take a pic of the switch open and out of the box. Make sure you get the inside of the box with the wires you have. This will give us a little more to go on.