07-15-2021, 05:32 PM
I finally got around to replacing two light dimmer switches for one room in my house -- the switches that were there, there was nothing wrong with them, but they didn't match and I just wanted to make it look nice. (It was two switches side-by-side in one box, so their not matching each other was super-obvious.)
So I turned off the AC to the house, unscrewed the cover, pulled out the switches, and discovered -- neither of the switches was grounded (green wire was loose). I'm guessing that it was because the box is plastic rather than metal. I was able to do the swapout no problem, but is it dangerous that the switches aren't grounded? (The other big problem I had was that the box was fairly well recessed into the wall on one side, making it nearly impossible to get the switches to stay straight and come forward enough to fit into the cover... and it also wasn't helpful that the wires in the box weren't properly color-coded.)
I'm NOT an electrician, and have never done anything like this before. But it'd be good for me to know because there's another set of switches in the house that aren't currently dimmable, that I'd want to make dimmable, so I see myself doing this again sometime in the very near future.
TiA
So I turned off the AC to the house, unscrewed the cover, pulled out the switches, and discovered -- neither of the switches was grounded (green wire was loose). I'm guessing that it was because the box is plastic rather than metal. I was able to do the swapout no problem, but is it dangerous that the switches aren't grounded? (The other big problem I had was that the box was fairly well recessed into the wall on one side, making it nearly impossible to get the switches to stay straight and come forward enough to fit into the cover... and it also wasn't helpful that the wires in the box weren't properly color-coded.)
I'm NOT an electrician, and have never done anything like this before. But it'd be good for me to know because there's another set of switches in the house that aren't currently dimmable, that I'd want to make dimmable, so I see myself doing this again sometime in the very near future.
TiA