House electrical wiring question

Factual Questions
1

In one of our rooms we have electrical outlets on the east wall, the west wall, and the north wall. There is no outlet on the south wall.

There is a wall switch on the east wall at the room entrance. The switch controls the east and north outlets, but not the west outlet.

:rolleyes::smack::mad: This is exactly opposite to how we would like it.

For reasons that don’t matter here, we would prefer the switch only control the west outlet and not the other 2.

1.)How big of a hassle would it be to change this.

B.)If it’s not something I can do, about how much of an expense do you think it’ll be to have an electrician do it?

2
  1. You’d have to pretty much gut the room to the studs and completely re-wire the room, so maybe a couple weeks for a professional crew.

B) The actually wiring is easy, buy the book “Household Wiring for Dummies”. The biggest expense will be hanging new drywall, tape and finish, painting, trimming doors windows and new carpet. I’d guess thousands of dollars, weeks of time … this is a fairly major renovation project.

3

Blah!

I was afraid of that. Guess we’ll have to improvise.

4

You can get an inexpensive kit for a battery-operated remote switch for the west outlet. Just hang the remote on the wall, next to the “real” light switch. An example on Amazon.

5

Well, a complete gut is maybe worst-case.

I mean, just removing the east and north outlets from the wall switch, you could probably do without removing any drywall, or maybe just a tiny patch around the switch. You’re just connecting the wires across the switch, after all.

Of course, there’s not a whole lot of reason to do that unless you connect something else to the switch (otherwise, just leave it on all the time). And how hard it is to connect the west outlet to the switch depends on where the wiring for the outlet goes now. Best case, it already runs near the wall switch, so you only need to take out some of the drywall. (If you’re really, really lucky, there might even be a way to get into the wall from the back side, so you don’t need to remove any drywall at all. I mean, it’s possible at least.)

Problem is, you might not be able to tell where the wires are until you start pulling drywall off. But, particularly if this room is above an unfinished basement where you can see wires, you (or an electrician willing to come out and give an estimate) could try and figure out where the wires are, and from that figure out how much drywall needs to be removed.

6

I am not your electrician, etc.

There are options besides gutting the room, if the conditions are right, and you are confortable doing so.

Is this on a floor with an accessible basement? Or an attic? If neither, then go back to watchwolf49’s suggestion (ETA or Heracles’ suggestion, although I’ve haven’t used one).

Turn off the breaker before beginning work. Test and verify circuit is dead.

In the switch box, you could connect the hot to hot, white to white, and ground to ground(bare to bare), with a tail off each, to connect to the switch from the hot and ground (neutral would pass by the switch, to the previous switched outlets and the new switched outlet). Cap and tape all connections. This will make the outlets live, albeit a long meandering circuit, but otherwise fine.

From the attic/basement locate the walls for the switch and outlet, run/fish 12-2 wire from the switch wall to the outlet wall into each of the switchbox.

Wire in the switch from the hot tail from earlier, and ground the switch with the ground wire. Tie in the neutral, bypassing switch, and connect the grounds.

On the outlet on the west wall, either a) break off the connector tabs between the connector screws, if you want to control one outlet, and keep the other live. Connect the switch to one set of screws, the live to the other set.
or b) cap off and tape the hot wire feeding the outlet, and wire in the switch, tailing in the neutral and ground to the old feed (to keep a continuous neutral/ground).

Test circuit with resistance meter with switch on and off to verify connections before turning on breaker. Be sure switch is off and nothing is plugged into the outlets when breaker is turned on to avoid surges. Test voltage with switch on and off.

If you are comfortable with spackling and wall repair, and don’t have attic/basement access, you could cut a small access hole above the switch and outlet where the wall meets the ceiling and proceed this way - IF the joists are running east/west. If you have a simple ceiling light (in another room) that you could take down, you may be able to see which way the joists run before cutting into the wall.

7

Yeah, “advising complete gut” is in the union rules …

I’ve used molded wire conduit before with good to great success. I believe only a new hot needs to be run to the unswitched outlet, the old neutral and ground would be reuseable. However in some jurisdictions this isn’t allowed and kinda sorta wreaks the visual appeal.

8

Stealing a neutral from a different branch circuit is a bad idea and IIRC is no longer allowed. You could potentially overload that neutral without tripping a breaker.

ETA: If the whole room is on a single breaker then stealing the neutral might be OK. But it would offend me aesthetically.

9

Chances are good that all three outlets are on the same circuit breaker. It is even likely that the west outlet wiring branches out from the switch.

10

There’s a good chance that there is/are fire blocking or nailers in the wall that will prevent you from fishing wires up or down. A stud finder may help you figure that out.

11

Well, since folks have already covered the “hope your home was built with easy access to the wiring in mind” angle,
Try one of those home controllers?
For decades they have offered devices to “automate your home” by allowing remote control of outlets and switches. You replace the outlets and switches you want to control with ones that contain the control stuff, and then can run them from either a plug-in box the size of an alarm clock or something plugged into your computer.

Except there was another kind of controller, one I haven’t seen in decades, really since these systems were new. It was a switch that was a transmitter instead of a receiver, so it could be set to run anything else on the system.
Since it was meant to replace an existing switch, I would think it would be designed to complete the circuit it originally served as a switch for, and if not that should be a fairly simple job for an electrician to handle.

It sounds like it would be perfect for your needs. But, as I said, I haven’t actually seen one for sale in … 30 years? Every time I try to search for one, all I can find are switched that can be controlled remotely, not switches to do the remote controlling. I’m not sure they are made anymore.

12

remote switches is one easy way.

If all outlets are on same circuit fish a new wire down to the switch box. Run it across the attic and down the wall to outlet box.

If the west outlet is on another circuit then fish a 12/3 between the two boxes. At the outlet box disconnect the hot wire from the outlet and connect it to the black wire in the 12/3. connect the red wire to the outlet. Connect the ground wires together. Cap and safe off the white wire. In the switch box disconnect all wires from the switch and connect them together, this will provide power 24/7 to east and north outlets. Connect the black and red wire from the 12/3 to the switch, one wire per side. Connect the ground to switch. Cap and safe off the white wire.

12/2 could be used instead of 12/3. But re phase the white wire to red or black using electrical tape. But some people don’t like re phasing wires.

I have done something like this many times. In fact I am adding a light, light and fan, and extra outlets to my 2nd bathroom now.

13

The wiring in my house all runs around the crawl space. I think it would be rather easy to rewire the outlets and switches from above. YMMV.

14

Does the switch control both sides of the outlet?

For switches intended to control light fixtures which plug in, the top outlet is switched, and the bottom is constantly hot.

If this is te case, the solution is simple, especially if you can access the walls from the top or from the bottom.

So: Can you get into the attic and/or basement (assuming the walls are accessible) and do the outlets have an unswitched side?

If there is an unswitched side, just replace the outlet with a new one and cap off the switched line. Fish a wire into one of the existing switched lines and connect it to the west outlet.
If you can’t fish a line, use surface conduit.

15

Oh - before ripping out the drywall, remove the baseboard and run the wire through a channel you cut into the drywall behind the baseboard. Much easier.

16

Before panicking, do you have romex or conduit. If you have conduit redoing wiring is much more easy (I lucked out in my 1960s house.

You could use something like the Insteon system- replace the switch with a controller, wire the outlets to be all on, and use a receiver where you want a lamp. As a bonus you add the capability to dim the lamp- you put a special “key” on the lamp plug that’s required to activate the outlet, so it won’t activate if someone plugs in a dimmer. If the switch is a loop, the second wire can be assigned as a neutral so run the controller. Plus you can buy a remote to control it from your bed.
http://www.smarthome.com/switchlinc-dimmer-insteon-2477d-remote-control-dimmer-dual-band-white.html
http://www.smarthome.com/outletlinc-dimmer-insteon-2472dwh-remote-control-outlet-dual-band-white.html

17

But is it up to code? IANA expert but it smells to my like this wouldn’t be legal in many, if not all, US jurisdictions.

18

Use these, wire protection plates.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_170196-166-KNS1_0__?productId=3691958

19

It’s a common practice and suggested in several DIY books I’ve read. Someone is unlikely to come along later and nail a picture frame to the baseboard.

20

Yes, it controls both side of the outlet.

The problem is, where we want the lamps in this room (there is no ceiling light). In order for the switch to control the lamps we need them plugged in to the outlets controlled by the switch. Which results in cords all around the room.

Thanks for the posts folks. But instead I’m going to go with molding that hides cords. We’re having new carpet put in this room on the 30th and will do it then.