What to do with an empty electrical box

In My Humble Opinion
1

We’ve recently purchased a house, so it’s time to start fixing things, painting, and making it our own. There’s a 3-gang electrical box in the garage near the door to the house that is, essentially, useless. It holds three push-button switches that were apparently for old garage door openers. The wiring for the current openers runs through the conduit that supplies the 3-gang box, and then out the side of the box through a knock-out, and then to the door opener controls on the wall. So, while not completely empty, there’s just a couple of small wires passing through the box. There’s no other reason for this box to exist.

The obvious solution is to just buy a blank faceplate and call it a day. But that feels like a waste. Anyone have any creative ideas? At the very least, I feel like it might be a good place to hide a spare key, but even that seems mundane.

The more outlandish, the better. :smiley:

2

Get a great, big knife switch and rig it to make a nasty buzzing noise if somebody touches it, maybe have it spark a little bit. Amuse your friends!

3

“Daddy Only” liquor cabinet

4

Find antique telephone maybe? Assuming you still have a land line.

5

Since there’s still live wiring in the box, code requires that it remain accessible, which means you can’t just cover it up or remove it.

So I recommend:

  1. Blank three-gang faceplate.
  2. Three switches that do nothing, placed there to torture future occupants of the house.
6

In other words:

  1. My original plan, or,
  2. What the previous owners did to me. :smiley:
7

Ooh…I have a better idea. Big knife switch rigged to set off a loud scream from inside the house whenever anyone throws it.

See, this is more like what I had in mind.

8

Just keep Prince Philip away from it - he holds fuse boxes to a high standard.

9

Make sure to label one of the switches WHITE HOUSE CHRISTMAS TREE and when questioned about it go stone serious in the face. ‘National Security,’ you’ll say when pressed.

10

Three red or orange switches, carefully labeled. We could have a whole thread on what to label them…

ELECTRIC FENCE
RAISE TURRETS
SILO ACCESS
BUNKER DOOR
ARMORY HATCH
AUTOGUN PODS

11

Not the third switch, Master!

12

I’ll second this. Maybe scrawl a few numbers on the wall next to under a heading that says “Launch codes”.

13

Personally, I’d just make sure the wires in it were securely wire-nutted off so there would be no shorts, and then probably just put a blank faceplate on it.

If I was feeling froggy, I might remount the box in the wall, or just push it up in the wall, and patch the hole in the wall.

14

Or trace the wires to the next junction boxes, wire off the connections there, and then get rid of the box.

15

Throw one of these in there… retinal scanner. A funky looking lense and a low powered blue LED and you’re golden.
\Also, launch codes

16

So far as what is best for maintenance and being able to access that wire in the future, install a blank cover plate.

17

Can anything useful be run through them that you don’t already have? Motion sensor lights maybe?
OK, that’s reaching.

As for useless switches, I still remember the story told when I was a kid about how a new homeowner found out that the prior owner had sunk heat coils into the cement of his front walk (so he could melt ice/snow off without shoveling).

“Holy Hell, how is our electric bill $300 this month???”

18

Which is why you always install such things with either key-controlled switches or something else that takes a positive double action. And label it permanently.

19

If these wires are for the garage door opener switches, they are low voltage wires and not only do not have to be in an accessible box by code, but absolutely cannot share a box with line voltage wire.

20

What to do with an empty electrical box?

Shave its belly with a rusty razor.
mmm