How To Wire A Switch Leg For A Light

The switched leg of a switch simply refers to the wire that is supplied electricity when the switch is turned on.

How to wire a switch leg for a light. When wiring switches this type of cable may be used as a switch leg where you need two black wires to go from the switch to black wires located at the light or at an intermediate electrical box. Either 14 2 with ground wg for 15 amp circuits or 12 2wg for 20 amp circuits. A 2 wire feed is pulled from the nearest source of power like a receptacle or the panel to the switch. With this configuration the wire from the power source comes into the junction box where the light is installed and then a switch leg goes from the light to the light switch.

The switch leg is still made up of two wires but the hot wire connects directly to the switch and the two wires connect directly to the outlet. A three conductor cable is used to bring the hot wire the switch leg and the neutral conductor to the outlet on the right. When the switch is on the switched leg then provides power to the fixture or device to be powered. This other and more complicated way of doing things uses what s called a switch leg.

The switch leg is controlling the bottom half of each split receptacle outlet. Level beginner description power a hot and a neutral is fed to the switch with 1 switch leg run from the switch to 1 light. Because the light fixture is normally in the middle of the room it can be really inconvenient having to walk into the middle of a dark room to pull the chain to turn the light on. A lot of older homes have light fixtures that must be switched on by means of a pull chord or pull chain hanging from the light fixture itself.

When using the white wire as a hot or line it must be re identified with a different color other than white gray or green. The terminals are brass. I m not going to get into the details of how that s wired. The second wire completes the circuit by connecting to the house neutral wire in the switch wiring box instead of in the outlet wiring box.

Installing a switch leg for a light fixture is a medium diy job that can. This entry was posted in indoor wiring diagrams and tagged do it yourself handyman handywoman home electrical home improvement home renovations home wiring house wiring how to wire a light switch light light switch power switch switch leg wiring wiring diagram. If you want to install a light fixture or switched outlet you will need to know how to properly wire a two conductor switched leg. As shown in the diagrams below you can paint a couple of inches of the end of the white wire black or wrap it with black electrical tape to.