What is Reversed Polarity?
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Just like water, electricity ‘flows’ through a house. When we turn a light switch on and off, we are opening and closing a dam that allows electricity to flow.
Sounds simple; yet, this thing called ‘reversed polarity’ is usually the cause of a shock when we try to unscrew a light bulb we thought had the light switch in the ‘off’ position. Wha?
Each fixture/switch/plug has an ‘electricity in’ (hot) and an ‘electricity out’ (neutral) wire. However, sometimes we get things messed up when we are being a handy-person putting in a new switch or receptacle when we have no training and we attach the out to the in and the in to the out…which causes ‘reversed polarity’.
For safety reasons, the hot and neutral wires should never be reversed. Today, for example, modern fixtures have a wide and a narrow blade so that a fixture can only be plugged into a receptacle the correct way to insure the correct polarity. But the receptacle itself needs to be wired correctly!
So, next time you get a shock when screwing in a light bulb…you now know the likely problem!
- Scott Askew
Posted in: Intown Living