wiring

[Dentaltec]

Existing garage lighting for 16, 8 foot old school flour on one 15 amp breaker. There are 3 doors and at each entrance there are 2 switches to turn on the front half of the garage and the back half.

Just purchased a bunch of hi bay LED lights and have been slowly replacing the old lights and everything has been super straight forward. All the lights I have replaced thus far had the traditional 3 leads black white and ground. Today I got to a fixture that had a 3rd lead "red" and was connected to the black "I think" I just didn't see it until after I ripped the old fixture down.

SO when I connect the red with the black it does not separate the zone like it used to. Now its turning all the lights on with either of the switch.

I know its very difficult to envision what I am sharing but just wonder if its something simple that I messed up?

The problem is all the junction boxes up in the attic are buried with insulation so its hard to make a diagram to know whats going where.

Thank you for any help

 

[Gerry347]

Sounds like you found the main power to all the lights and whoever installed everything used a 14-3 wire from the switches to that point and the black hot lead is feeding power to one zone and the red hot lead is feeding power to the second zone.

Disconnect the light at that point and check for power on the Black & Red wire separately using one switch at a time. If each one is controlled separately then I believe you just need to connect the black to black and then red to black to get your two zones back.

 

[ard]

Do you have a meter or test light? Agree w Gerry above on testing each wire, with each switch

I am wondering if maybe they were NOT connected? And when you now connected the red and black it is defeating the separated banks

Try disconnecting the red (so just the black to the fixture.).

Then try disconnecting the black but connecting the red to the fixture.

 

[Dentaltec]

Thanks for the tips guys, I have half a dozen more fixtures, that I need to r and r and then I will search to see if there are any other weird extra leads. I do have a multi meter and I will pull it out. as it is now I have ditched one of the blacks and the two switches are working independently HOWEVER right now they front and back are not the same as it was. some in the back and some in the front are swapping so I know there is some jumper I need to add

Thanks again fro taking the time to help a brother out, I appreciate it,