#Basement light switch teenagent how to#

Check out these electrical 'how-to' books that I used to teach myself how to install a light switch and much, much more. When you're ready for the next level it's time to get your learnin' on. It's a great project to start learning how to do electrical projects around your house. Here's a picture of all the tools I ended up using. To avoid frustration prep all of the materials you'll need a day before you attempt the project. If I had had everything I needed I probably could have changed that out in about an hour. I had to go back and carefully recheck my work. The lights in the work room were not coming on even though my new switch worked fine. With switch in down position (on) black has no voltage, red and white have voltage. With switch in up position (off) red has no voltage, white and black do. The switch has white wire at top left, red wire bottom left, black wire bottom right. You wire something incorrectly - For example, in the project above I thought I twisted three black wires together but in fact one was not tied in correctly. I want to add a light at the top of the stairs tied to the switch at the top of the stairs. Prepare ahead of time to put in a new one.Ĥ. Just take a note of the box size before you start. Granted, this one takes a bit more work to fix but it is still fairly easy. I ran into this problem just doing this project. So you try to use a utility knife and some pliers but you end up damaging the wire or worse, cutting yourself bleeding all over your new switch. Label all of them today! One time and you're done.Ģ. Your breaker panel isn't labeled - You end up spending an hour just figuring out how to start.

The only draw back was that I had un-wire everything in order to install it.Ĥ Gotchas that make installing a light switch difficultġ. He recommended this new box that they're stocking which has an awesome little extra space that I call a 'side-car' I went to Home Depot and talked to Wayne. Not to mention the fact that there were now three more wire nuts than before because the new switch didn't use terminal screws. So what happened here was the original electrical box was way to small for the new and much larger switch. The process is more or less the same for a dimmer or three-way switch with some minor twists and turns. In this case I'm installing the motion sensing switch with a timer and a on/off button that you see above. How do you install a light switchīefore you can install a light switch you need to have a light switch. But first, let's start with the basic light switch installation steps. At the end of the post I have a list of 4 gotchas that make this easy project. Heck, even the back of the box shows it in 3 easy steps.Įxcept, it's not so easy if you haven't done it before. On the surface installing a light switch seems easy. Install a new motion sensing light switch. Regardless, each night I have to trudge down to the basement storage room, which is about 8 leagues under the sea, and check. Sometimes they remember, other times, not so much. I remind Charlotte and Christian about 2000 times per year to turn off the lights in the basement after feeding the cats. How do you install a light switch? It seems simple enough. Be sure to read Step 4 to see why this light switch installation was only just beginning. Just reading other posts and noticed some people were asked to clarify.Seconds after this photo, I realized I had a big problem. Quick edit- this is in the US if that helps at all. TLDR: how to separate power from lights and outlets one one circuit and one switch. I am a diy here so if I need to call in the big guns what am I looking at to get this cleaned up? If this is something that could be tackled any suggestions on where to start would be amazing.

#Basement light switch teenagent code#

(Lights on - outlet power// lights off no power) There is one outlet that is the exception to this right next to my utility room which I’m guessing was already there before this room was finished and whatever this guy did to wire up the finished basement had to have been amateur/diy? This doesn’t seem like it would be to code for the simple reason I’ve been searching for this online for hours with nothing remotely close but fortunately found this subreddit. (Lesson learned) There are about 8 outlets in this room and they are all on the same on/off circuitry as the lights. The main area has a quirk that was completely missed due to the room being empty and only flicked the lights on and off during showing/inspection. Hi - so I just bought a house with a newly finished basement.