|
Ok, I just bought a house and about the only complaint I have with it is that roughly 50% of the light switches appear to do literally nothing. I'm not sure why this is, but it's pretty strange. For example, my bedroom has one single lightswitch that you would think would turn on the light. Does it? Nope. It appears to do nothing. Whether it's on or off, the fan/light in the middle of the room is actuated with the regular pull chains. Both of the bathrooms have three switches. One turns on the light, one turns on the fan, and the other? gently caress if I know. For bonus points, my bathroom doesn't even HAVE a fan, but when I turn the fan switch on, I clearly hear the unmistakeable sound of a bathroom fan running. There is a similar panel in the secondary living room where one switch turns on the hallway light, one switch turns on the fan/light in the living room, and the third switch mysteriously does gently caress all. There is a three switch panel in the first living room, and as far as I can tell, they pretty much do nothing. Once more, fan/light in the center runs perfectly with the pull chains, but the other two seem to do absolutely nothing whatsoever. I guess my question really is how hard would it be to track down where each and every switch goes myself, and past that, re-wire them so that they actually work for the fans/lights/whatever they're supposed to toggle? With as many phantom switches as there are, is this going to be something that could realistically be done in a weekend or would I be better off just using some of the money I had saved away to just pay an electrician to run through and take care of this poo poo?
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2009 09:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 6, 2024 02:57 |
|
|
jackyl posted:Have you checked to see if they are wired to outlets? Just carry a lamp around. Once you've mapped out what is connected to what, then you can decide if it is worth rewiring or not. As far as how hard it is, that depends on what you want to do. Swapping out outlets or switches is easy, running a new wire in an old construction situation is harder. Yep. All switches save for two are mapped and functional. I sort of hate that they're wired to electrical outlets, and also found the garage door opener is in an outlet that's wired to a switch. The latter I actually like after a bit of thought (I can just turn the switch off at night and a jackass with a bunch of garage remotes can't open the thing through dumb luck), but for any switches inside the house itself, I hate it. The bedroom switch is hooked up to my UPS/Computer, which means someone walking in and reflexively turning on the light gets about 10 seconds to realize what they did and restart the flow of power to the UPS. That one I'd much rather just have control the light portion of the fan like a normal switch. Keeping the fan itself always on and controlling it by drawstring is preferred, but I'd like that switch to control the light itself and not an outlet. The switch in the second living room controls an outlet on the wall. Unfortunately, this outlet is next to the only live cable lead we have, and once more controls the UPS, cable modem, and switch for the entire drat house. How tough would it be to route this bastard somewhere else or just re-install a two switch box in place of the three switch and bypass the outlet switch? Third question, and I think this is the last one for electric work, do all dimmer switches work the same? The second living room has a four position dimmer switch, but it's sort of backhacked into the switch box. Relating to above, I'd really like to simply get a modern dimmer/switch combo box and replace it. The two mystery switches still left at this point are one in the garage, and one in the first living room, both of which I highly suspect control motion detecting exterior light that may actually be physically broken. I plan to go around this weekend, fix all the exterior lights, and get that all taken care of and check those switches, but those are a very minor complaint, if anything.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2009 06:08
|
|