Trying to finalize the wiring for my sauna and the LED lights have a two wire 120 volt wiring setup (rather than 3). The control box is setup for neutral/line/ground wiring for the 120 volt light. So in three wire, white is neutral, black is line and green is ground. My two wire setup is red and black. Can I wire up red to the neutral and black to the line terminal and not have problems? Or is there something else that I need to do?
If that’s the way the instructions tell you to, then yes. I presume this is a European light, as those are not UL standard colors?
Or, are you sure that these are 120V lights? Are they actually low voltage and supposed to be run off of a power supply/ transformer? I’ve seen similar things, but I’ve also seen light manufacturers use whatever color conductor they had were able to buy for cheap.
Another possibility (to go along with the first, actually) is that it’s a metal framed light that simply needs the ground to be bonded to the frame (would be either a green grounding screw, or some sort of screw hole for a ground screw).
It’s honestly hard to say, precisely. You’re welcome to post a pic of the light’s instructions and I’ll take a look, or post a link to the light itself and I’ll see what I can see. But without hands-on, who knows?
Oh - but you are correct: it is against the NEC to install a luminaire (they went to that term about 20 years ago… stupid…) that is powered by 120V without it being properly grounded.
- Jeff
So, yes I think it is European. And I am actually talking about the power supply cord. The directions were to simply cut off the plug and connect the wires with the white to neutral, black to line, and green to ground. However when I cut mine open there is only two wires - red and black. The instructions on wiring were from the control unit for the sauna and not from the light manufacturer.
So not sure.
Yeah, something doesn’t sound right.
Verify the light is actually 120V, 60Hz.
It definitely is. Plugged it in and it worked well. It is an LED strip light.
Like I said, based on the directions I simply cut off the plug from the power supply for the strip light and (should have been obvious as it was only a two prong plug) there are only two wires to connect to the power supply module.
Hmm. There is some double-insulated stuff out there that doesn’t require a ground.
If that’s the case, then it should be wired with lamp cord, which is just a 2-wire cord. Although I’ve never seen a lamp cord with red and black conductors, does not mean that it isn’t out there! All we gotta do is figure out which is the hot, which is the neutral, then re-identify the conductors before splicing.
Luckily, this is super easy with lamp cord: one side of the cord, along the narrow edge, the insulation should have a ‘ridge’ that you can feel with a fingernail. The conductor on that side if the cord is the neutral. (Hopefully that makes sense…)
- Jeff
Oh sorry, wrong thread. Maybe.
I hope it does not come to that…
Got word back from the company I purchased things through and they say red is line and black goes to neutral. So I should be good to go.
Thanks for the feedback!
I personally prefer 222…
The power module I am wiring the lights from is 240 volt fed though so…