Crazy circuit on house wiring

RatLabGuy

RatLabGuy

You look like a monkey and smell like one too
Joined
May 18, 2005
Location
Churchville, MD
So, we just bought a 'new" house (ok 42 y/o) thurs.
Before moving in, wnated to do some minor things, one being add cieling fans/lights. Noen of teh rooms have overhead lights, although they do have switches.

so I figure... ok I'll find the outlet(s) tied to the switch, and go from there. Well, turns out... all outlets rae hot, switch seems to do nothing.
Huh...
Pull switch out - only 2 wires coming in. OK, I have an idea how this works, wires are both used as "hot" and in the box white = tied to hot.
Well, kind of.
Whole room is actually wired as follows.
Line comes up from the breaker to first socket. 2 conductor.
black tied to bottom post hot, white on bottom neutral. A line going out is... 3 conductors... whit tied to socket top neutral, bllack tied to otehr black line.. and red tied to top hot. So not the 3 conductor has 2 hots & 1 neutral. This passes to 3 other sockets, all all same - 3 coming in, 3 out, red on top, black on bottom. Mind you on every one the top and bottom legs are stil ltied together. Last one goes to the switch - a red and black line goes to the switch.
so needless to say, te hswitch is useless - it simply connects 2 already hot lines together.

WTF?? How could this happen? The seller said he'd had several sockets replaced recently, and in the inspection, inspector found a handful not preoperly grounded... seller allegedly had an electrician fix it all.

The only thing I could think is that all the TOP outlets should be switched, and bottom always hot. I've seen ths idone before by breaking the tabs and seperating the components. However having the tabs still in place makes this impossible.
Is it really possible that this was the original scheme, and someone could be so lame as to go and replace all of the sockets (who knows why), and not realize that they forgot to do this when they flipped on the switch to test it?
Or am I misisng something important?
I lost a whole freakin' evening trying to figure this out.
 
old houses don't have a "earth ground" If the outlets were replaced and not done correctly, they will always be hot. You don't have to break tabs off of the new outlets, just wire the correct side.
 
GotWood said:
old houses don't have a "earth ground" If the outlets were replaced and not done correctly, they will always be hot. You don't have to break tabs off of the new outlets, just wire the correct side.
Click to expand...

But by having the red and black wires connected to both posts on the same side, connected by a tab, they are now both hot (becauset he black is direct connected to teh breaker hot). Now you have a 3 conductor wire with 1 ground (wire had ground), 1 neutral, and 2 hots. Why would you do that?
 
burrellsjeep said:
You are on the right track,
The outlets should have the tabs broken so that is isolates the top to be turn on and off. More than likely they were replaced and the tabs were left unbroken, Only break them on the hot side.
Click to expand...

Since I installed a ceiling fan/light, I needed that switch to get power up to the ceiling instead. There was only 1 2-conductor wire in the wall going from the last outlet to the switch, so I had to use it to supply my power.
In the end I tore out the old switch box and ropped a lince to connect to the ceiling (so now it has 1 in, 1 out), and re-wired the outlet so it as just ending "normal" power.
Then had to go around to all switches and disabled that extra red wire (otherwise it would have just been sirting hot but open-ended).

I'm just trying to fathem how somebody could come through and replace all the switches, leaving the tabs on - and not ever bother to flip the switch and see, "oh wait this dosn't work..."
 
Here is ya a drawing

picture.php
 
RatLabGuy said:
Since I installed a ceiling fan/light, I needed that switch to get power up to the ceiling instead. There was only 1 2-conductor wire in the wall going from the last outlet to the switch, so I had to use it to supply my power.
In the end I tore out the old switch box and ropped a lince to connect to the ceiling (so now it has 1 in, 1 out), and re-wired the outlet so it as just ending "normal" power.
Then had to go around to all switches and disabled that extra red wire (otherwise it would have just been sirting hot but open-ended).
I'm just trying to fathem how somebody could come through and replace all the switches, leaving the tabs on - and not ever bother to flip the switch and see, "oh wait this dosn't work..."
Click to expand...

Its not that common to switch outlets with no over head lights these days, So I see how some one would make the mistake. Hell a rookie gets the easy stuff anyway like swapping outlets, So yeah I can see how that happined.
 
yeah except it was like this
 

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More than likely, it was previously set up to switch half of each duplex outlet. Somebody came along later and changed it, either deliberately or accidentally. Lots of older houses got wired this way back when most of your plug loads were lamps.

It's far from the weirdest or most dangerous wiring job I've seen in an older house. Just shrug and move on.
 
saf-t scissors said:
More than likely, it was previously set up to switch half of each duplex outlet. Somebody came along later and changed it, either deliberately or accidentally. Lots of older houses got wired this way back when most of your plug loads were lamps.

It's far from the weirdest or most dangerous wiring job I've seen in an older house. Just shrug and move on.
Click to expand...


big ole +1
 
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