Anybody know how to wire a switch to a bottom half of a receptacle? The upper half remains hot all the time.
Hot wire enters the outlet box…….exits to switch……one wire in switch box.
When finished you should be able to flick the wall switch and have a table light go on when it’s plugged into the lower half of the receptacle.
Replies
OK i'll try to explain it the easiest way I can. On a receptical there is a little metal tab that connects the top and bottom screws.
You need to break out that little tab on the hot side so the two screws are independent of each other. The nuetral will work for both sides.
The black wire coming into the box needs to wire nutted to the black wire going to the switch and have a pigtail coming off to attach to the constant hot side of the receptical. That will give constant power to the one side.
The white wire comming from the switch needs to be rapped with black tape so others know it's hot. That wire need to be connected to the switched side of the receptical.
The white wire coming into to receptical box needs to connected to the neutral terminal on the receptical.
All grounds need to connected as usual.
Hope this helps
JM
Close. Wire nut the black wire coming into the box to the WHITE wire going to the switch. Place the black wire coming back from the switch on the second brass (ie, hot side) screw of the outlet.
Either way the white wire needs to be taped black.
Dan,
NOt a hit on you, just confused and need clarification.
I always thought that when using 2 conductor, the switched wire should be white (w/black tape) and the continuously hot should be black to maintain the standard "black is hot".
Please exand your answer to Jemcon.
SamT
"I always thought that when using 2 conductor, the switched wire should be white (w/black tape) and the continuously hot should be black to maintain the standard "black is hot"."In my mind (and also out of my mind) I agree with you. Black should always be the hot and a remarked wire is maybe a hot (240) or somethings hot (switched). That makes sense to me.But the code specificaly calls out that the remarked white is the alwasy hot lead and the black is the switched lead on a switch leg.Drove me crasy on 3-way, 4-ways circuit where the feed was at one point and the load at another. The color codes swap in the middle. But in one way it is logical. The light always ends up with a back and white.
Bill,
Thanks I'll try to remember that code says that black does not always mean "Hot"
Ooooh, my head aches.
Samt
All this assumes the wiring was done by a competent electrician.If you open up a junction box and find a white connected directly to a black You know that the cable with the white wire goes to a switch. You can also assume the black wire in the same cable is the 'switched leg', the conductor that that is hot or not depending on the position of the switch.A lot of older houses had the home run routed to an overhead octagon box, usually covered with a light fixture. The various devices around the room were fed from this single box. It can make for a very full box. Being able to quickly define which cables feed receptacles and which feed switches makes troubleshooting a lot easier.
If the black is hot and the white is switched, it's impossible to tell which wire is which in the fixture box. You can't count on the "marking" to be clearly obvious after a little rework (if it was ever marked to begin with). With the black and white nutted together it's obvious which is which.
thank you very much.
I share some of the others' confusion, and thank my lucky stars this do-it-yourselfer always worked where electric wires for residential ALWAYS had to be in metal conduit. So, I always pulled black wire to anything that was hot, and saved all this puzzlement you romex folks hassle with. Since I've run miles of metal conduit and pulled miles of wire, these days I frankly prefer working this way, but then I'm retired now, and can afford the time to do it rodent-proof, and somewhat fire-proof. And, with metal boxes and conduit, stuff is always grounded without a separate green wire.
If I was fiddling with 3 and 4 way switches, I would simply use other colors of wire (except green or white of course) so I could keep sorted out which wire was what. Sometimes, I had black and 2 other colors of hot wires running in a metal conduit (in addition to the neutral white), just so I could easily identify what was what at the other end.
As to old stuff, I sometimes dealt with 100-year-old stuff, which has nothing but black insulation. Umpteen wires, so no clue as to what was switched, always hot, neutral, or what. I always carried a tester, and flicked switches, and then soon found out what wire did what, and then applied colored tape as appropriate.
On the rare times I wanted a switched half of an outlet, yes, I snapped the tab, but I did so on BOTH sides of the outlet, and wired the switched part entirely separately from the always-hot side. Just my style. I would then run the hot, black, source wire directly to the switch, and maybe use blue coming back to the brass screw on the outlet, which was my personal color coding for a switched wire. And then run the white wire from the silver screw on that side of the outlet back to the neutral bar in the breaker box, just as I did for any other silver screw. Goose
> I would then run the hot, black, source wire directly to the switch, and maybe use blue coming back to the brass screw on the outlet, which was my personal color coding for a switched wire.
Mine is:
White = Neutral
Green = Ground
Black = Hot leg A
Red = Hot leg B
Blue = Switched, leg A
Orange = Switched, leg B
Purple = Three way runner, leg A
Brown = Three way runner, leg B
Yellow = Smoke Detector Interconnect
-- J.S.