Electrical Outlet Question: please help
My bedrooms do not have overhead lights and instead have a outlet that is controlled by a switch.
Thing is, that the switch controls both the top/bottom outlets in that outlets and that is a problem. My electrician told me something about how it's old wiring with only 2 wires and he can't do anything w/o running new wiring. This sounds bogus, as every other place I lived in only 1 of the 2 outlets was controlled by the switch so I can't believe Eichler would have it this way. Anyone w/same problem, advise solutions, please let me know.
Thanks in advance.
If your Eichler is like our 1958 Sunnyvale model, your electrician is telling the truth. Electrical codes of 50 years ago when the house was built were far different than what we expect and want today.
Dealing with electrical issues has been, in my opinion, the hardest thing about our house. No attic and no crawl space make it very difficult to upgrade electrical outlets and/or pull network wiring. Opening up the walls or running conduit over the roof are about the only options and even there you can't go too far without needing to replace the service entrance.
In our house, we use X10 wireless controllers for the bedroom lights. With X10, you plug your lamps into some small boxes that are then plugged into regular outlets. A controller (either a little box by the bed or a controller mounted in place of a wall switch) then can control the lights.
In our case, the switched outlet was changed to be on all the time, and the light switch for the bedroom was replaced with a three switch controller. Two sets of track lighting and the bedside lamps were put on lamp modules so they were controlled by the switch. When we walk into the room, we press the three switches, and each of the controlled lights comes on even though they're plugged into three outlets scattered through the room.
The last time I checked, Fry's still sells this stuff, as do a few places on the web. They are a nice solution for controlling room lights without rewiring outlets.
Robert[/b]
Alex: I'm a novice and may not fully undestand the info. You have 2-wire circuits; does this mean you don't have the 3rd bare ground wire in your cables??
In any case, in my experience it is typical that both sockets in an outlet are controlled by the same switch. If you want one socket to be always live, you have to apply Wiring 101 by breaking off the Black side copper bridge and connecting a live Black wire to the live socket. One white neutral wire can still serve both the switched and live sockets because the bridge is intact there.
Is this what you're asking about??
