Switched controlled circuit

[rlowe]

I found a gold mine in my house wireing this weekend. I have two circuits for outside lighting. I have a box at each corner of the house and at each corner of the garage. They were just bare wire capped. I wired up some outlets and am running the Christmans lighting off of this cicuit. I was wondering if I could put a switch in line on one of the circuits to control the power to the outlets. The catch is that the switch would be in the middle of the circuit, not at the beginging. Will this work?

Randy

[Billy B]

Absolutely, it is called a closed loop. The best advice I could offer instead of trying to suggest it here is to go to Lowes, or Home Depot and take a look at the wiring books. The diagrams are excellent and you don't have to be a certified electrician, if you know what you are doing. If you have any questions, I would suggest calling an electrical contractor to ask, not the HD or Lowes isle guys...there are jewels in the rough sometimes, but pretty rare.

I was working at my in-laws house in California and didnt have any of my books there. I did just that while adding a ceiling vent fan in her kitchen off the light switch.

Bill

[TDHofstetter]

Randy, there's one catch. If you put the switch in the middle of the line, then the section "upstream" of the switch cannot be powered fully off - it'll always have a "hot" wire. Therefore, if you need to work on that circuit, the switch won't protect you from "working hot".

-- Tim --


E Lignus Unum

[rlowe]

Yeah, that's true. I always flip the breaker when working on a circuit anyways. Just to be sure.

Randy

[deathwish2]

>Randy, there's one catch. If you put the switch in the
>middle of the line, then the section "upstream" of the
>switch cannot be powered fully off - it'll always have a
>"hot" wire. Therefore, if you need to work on that circuit,
>the switch won't protect you from "working hot".

My basement lights are wired in this fashion. When you flip the switch at the top of the stairs, the light at the bottom and one section of lights come on (a total of 3 - 4' shop lights and a small fluor fixture). Then, there are two other lighting sections, each controlled by their own switches, one for 'my' side of the basement (another 8 - 4' fixtures), the other for the remainder of the 'other' side of the basement (2 more 4' shop fixtures).

If you should forget to shut off one or both of the other two sections, the switch at the top of the stairs will kill the lighting in the whole basement.

It's a far cry from when I moved in and there were a grand total of THREE of those nifty porcelain lamp holders down there, one on the switch, the other two with pull strings.

--Deathwish

When it comes to
woodworking and buying
tools, I always think back to
my grandfathers advice on
golf . . . "it's not the arrows,
it's the indian.''