Hey, so i went to home depot to buy new lights for my grow box to support even more lighting, and I got light bases and wiring the guy got for me... and I cant figure out how to wire this??? someone help?
Yup white is live and goes to the silver screw, and the black goes to the gold screw, but I'm pretty sure you need to ground it to the J-box.
im attaching 4 of those light bases to a wooden square I built so i can raise/ lower the frame... well... i have it hooked up as is below and plugged it in and nothing happened.... wtf? (not: copper wire is not touching anything
It's a wonder you didn't blow a fuse or break a curcuit. That copper wire (earth) is connected to the white wire. Don't bother using an earth, just cut the copper wire back to the white plastic coating in the wire, making sure it is not touch anything. It shouldn't matter which terminal those coloured wires go to.
You have 3 wires (live, neutral and earth) but you only have 2 terminals in the light fitting. So the terminals in the light fitting are LIVE and NEUTRAL. There is no letters indicating which terminal is which. So i presume it doesnt matter which coloured wire goes to which terminal (if the built-in ballast for the fluorescent does need the right polarity, just switch the wires around). Usually on a plastic or ceramic light fitting theres a place to screw an earth wire, this is a dummy terminal, as it doesnt need an earth. Yours doesnt have this terminal, so cut/remove the earth wire. Also, i see you have 4 plugs wired up. You can actually use only 1 plug, and run the 4 CFLs from the 1 plug. In your light fitting there are 4 screws (2 in each terminal). Run a live and neutral wire from those 2 terminal to the other light fitting (and so-on), making sure all wires connect to the same colour. Run them in a parallel circuit.