Electrical update

I removed the entire circuit that included the burned looking wires. I dissected the wire at the location of the marks and found no internal evidence that the conductors got hot. The paper on the ground wire wasn't discolored, there was no flow on the insulation of the common or hot lead, so I'm at a loss. It was some extra work to remove and replace, but at least I feel better about it.

Existing issues

I'm putting a single recessed light at the bottom of the stairs and I plan to re-use the 3-way switch at the top of the stairs so I don't have to pull new wire. I pulled out the insulation below the wire drop to see where the wires went, and was quite disturbed to find burned insulation paper.
There is only one original circuit in the basement, and I haven't touched it yet as my new fixtures are on new circuits from the panel.


Looking up into the space, there is matching residue on the wire insulation, but it's strange that it doesn't appear melted at all. We've been in the house for 2 years and never smelled anything, or had issues with this circuit.

My only assumption is that during the original wiring, they mis-connected one of the three-way leads and tried to operate the circuit. This theoretically should result in a dead short, so I'm suprised that the breaker stayed on long enough to result in this kind of artifact.

For now, I think I'm going to look at other parts of this circuit and see if there are any additional examples of this kind of problem. If not, I may pull this section of wire out and replace it, just to err on the side of caution. I wonder what the individual conductor insulation looks like inside??

Ceiling Work

I finished wiring the 6 recessed lights on the primary side. I used a traditional 3-way wiring scheme running power to the first switch, 3 conductor to the 2nd switch, then on to the fixture group. Everything worked the first time with no issues.

I used Lutron dimmers and I'm pretty impressed with their product. There is no noise when the dimming function is used, although it does put out some heat. I ended up choosing the traditional flip style with the small dimmer slide. I thought about the paddle switches, but we don't have any of those anywhere else in the house, so I stayed with the common theme.

I finished the soffit under the ducting by connecting both drops with a 2x3 laying on it's side. I predrilled holes in the 2x2's on the bottom of the drops, then drove 2, 3-1/2" screws into the ends of the 2x3's. This worked well to keep them from rotating.

It's almost a 7 foot run for the 2x3's, so to provide support when the drywall is in place, I put a 2x2 tie down the middle, and connected periodically up to the floor joists.