need a little electrical help

[silverrocksta]

To start a friend showed me this years ago and I have tried several ways and just keep blowing my breaker.

Now to the problem. I am trying to splice a rotary dimmer switch around a power bar that has a timer. So I have an extension cord plugged into the wall with a 24 hr timer on the other end. I have the power bar plugged into the timer. From there I have my light and my exhaust plugged in. Now I have spliced into the cord of the fan and connected the hot(black) to one post on dimmer and then spliced into the extension cords hot wire and connected other post of dimmer. I first left the dimmer ungrounded plugged in and blew breaker. Tried grounding to the fan cord and then the extension cord both had same result. I have even switched the posts on the dimmer around same result. Anyone got any advice.

 

[go4snypr]

what are you "grounding" on the switch.. there should be no "ground" on a switch. only terminal for hot or "traveler" wires in the case of a 3 way switch. IF you cut the fan cord and cut the extension cord, the 2 blacks should go to the switch, the 2 whites should tie together. the ground goes to the box that should be holding the switch. I cant really follow what your saying in the post in my mind. Also if you cut the extension cord, what is running your lights??

 

[go4snypr]

post a pic, that would help lots

 

[go4snypr]

IF you cut the extension cord, and put the black to the switch, and you cut the fan cord, what did you do with the plugin end of the fan cord?? Do you have 3 black wires a the switch one from extension cord, and 2 from fan?? or did you just cut the plugin end off of the fan. If your trying to plug the fan in to the power bar, then that may be your problem. You should have cut the plugin right off of the fan, and put the black from the fan to your switch and the black from the extension cord to your switch. Then you have to tie the white from your fan to the white from your cord. If you have 3 black wires at your switch, when you plug it into the power bar you will be putting 120 volts from the cord right back into your power bar when you plug it in.

 

[Graytail]

If I'm understanding what you want to accomplish, you shouldn't be messing with the extension cord at all. You want to vary the fan speed, right?

Do you want the fan to run on the timer or not?

If yes, then you just splice the dimmer into the fan's hot line - cut the line - one end to each pole of the dimmer. No need to mess with the extension cord.

If no, then run another extension cord to the fan, skipping the timer. But same/same - you still just splice the dimmer into the fan's cord.

 

[silverrocksta]

Sorry for all the confusion. What I was trying to accomplish was for the timer to turn off the power bar which had the light and fan plugged in. Then when the timer turned off I wanted the dimmer switch to slow the fan down to a 10% draw so to keep temperatures up without a heater and still have negative pressure.

I went down and looked at it again the problem was I left wires out of caps and they touched and shorted. I rewired it all and it worked but the light. For some reason would stay on but dimmed. So I just removed the power bar and all is well.

Thanks for trying to help everyone