NA Convert a bulb outlet to an outlet outlet

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

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I have a gadget that goes on a wall with a plug hanging down. Small cord (USB-C) type plug not a big one like shown in my art project below.
There is no outlet on the wall on which the gadget is going to hang and I don't wish to route wires from the gadget around door frames to get to the outlet on the opposing wall.

Behind the wall on which the gadget is to be mounted, is my pantry which contains 1 light bulb at the top and a wall switch.

I am thinking of drilling a hole through the wall and tapping into the electrical source in there but got to wondering if there already exist a device that will satisfy the following requirements.

1. Allow me to keep the bulb
2. Add a normal wall electrical outlet
3. Allow the outlet to have power regardless of the state of the wall switch but keep the bulb tied to the switch.

Number 3 is key. I am aware that there are devices that screw into the bulb socket and have an outlet but the plug would only have power when the switch is flipped.
Is there something that adds a wall outlet but bypasses the switch for that one outlet?


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Most switches are wired to the hot (black) wire of the circuit, so the light fixture uses an uninterrupted ground and a neutral.
You will need to pull the hot from before the switch to have power thats not affected by the switch.

I would suggest tapping in before the switch, but how hard that is depends on how its wired.
In my experience, 80% lights are wired one of 2 ways:
1)14/2 goes from the circuit to the switch, 14/2 goes from the switch to the light.
2)14/2 goes from the circuit to the light, a single wire goes to the switch and comes back.
(I have seen some other ways that lights were wired, but they were in old houses with strange wiring throughout)

If you can find which has the 14/2 to the circuit you can tap in there. I would start by pulling the switch because its easier, if the main power is going through there you will see the black wires connected to the switch and the white wires joined with a wire nut. If you only see black wires in the box, that means the circuit power is going somewhere else (likely the light itself).

A few things to keep in mind:
1) In most places adding a new outlet requires a "pull wire" permit. (Do with that information what you will)
2) If you get a pull wire permit, you will need ensure the number of devices on that circuit is within code, depending on the location, you may have to do it based on code defined load numbers.
Practically speaking:
3) You do need to keep in mind that whatever you plug in will need to compete with the existing loads on the circuit (so if your panty light shares a circuit with the microwave and you run a bread maker on the new outlet you will likely flip a breaker).
4) If the circuit that runs the light is a dedicated lighting circuit (many houses built in the 90s/2000s has a circuit dedicated to lighting for that floor) and you are running LEDs in your house then that circuit likely has a lot of power to spare.
 
How permanent do you want your solution to be?

They sell wireless switches that can screw into your light bulb socket and they make Y-splitters to split that light bulb base into two bulb bases.

You can split it, turn one into a 120V outlet, the other into the wireless switch base, leave your existing switch on all the time, and turn the light on and off with the wireless switch.
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This is all off the shelf, admittedly janky, but you would have to try hard to hurt yourself doing it :)
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Not very new, built in 2003 I think.
Click to expand...
That's pretty new. There's an easy easy to test this for the not electrically inclined: With the switch off, stick your finger in the socket and feel around. If you get a shock, Captain Thorpe's plan will work. Make certain you're not wearing rubber-soled shoes.

Don't actually do this.
 
I don’t know the cut off date, it was probably long before 2003, but apparently it was a common thing to put the switch on the neutral leg along time ago (figured that out changing a chandelier in a 1950’s house, switch is off, light is off, no power….wrong) asked a journeyman electrician I know about it and he said it was the way it used to be done.
 
Leave the main light switch on, or even replace it with a wire link so the circuit is always energized. Place a blanking plate over the switch box, attach a wireless switch to it. The receiver goes in the light fixture, turning the light on and off.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Red to red, black to black and if it isn't marked you ground it. Works well in airplanes.
Click to expand...
Cow-orker comes in Monday morning and starts asking me about adding a switch and outdoor light... He hooked everything up, screwed in the fuse, the light was on. Flipped the switch, the light went out. Flipped the switch again, nothing - fuse is blown. Puts in a new fuse - same thing. Third fuse - same. His dad suggested putting a penny under the fuse so it didn't blow while they tried to figure out what was wrong... Surprisingly (at least to me - given how well I knew the guy), the cow-orker opted to not do that.

I ask him how he hooked it up...

He had black and white wires coming from the fuse panel and black and white wires coming from the light, so he put the black wires on one side of the switch and the white wires on the other side.

Oh....

I drew him a diagram showing how to hook it up correctly.
 
A friend had an avionics shop for a few decades. One day a guy shows up in a Saratoga, kept having issues with his instrument panel dimmer blowing the output transistors.
He starts checking things under the panel (there were a bunch of post lights for the instruments), everything looks ok until he notices a couple dimmer wires going to what seem to be regular screws.
At some point the mechanical DG had been replaced with a Sandel EHSI, and the installers replaced the post lights with regular mounting screws. Then proceeded to reconnect the dimmer wires to the mounting screws.
I guess LEDs weren't a thing then, but they tried to invent Light Emitting Screws.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Red to red, black to black and if it isn't marked you ground it. Works well in airplanes.
Click to expand...
I had a damaged extension cord plug. It was a 100ft 12ga cord ( ~ $75 new)
I bought a replacement plug instead for about $5 and upon opening it, I found I needed to read the instructions.
  • Green wire to the green grounding screw
    • So far so good.
  • White (“neutral”) wire to the silver screw
  • Black (“hot”) wire to the brass screw
    • Huh? Why "white to silver" and "black to brass"?
    • Even then, the green, white and black wires were so tight, and did not line up properly with the color codes screws making it nearly impossible to make the wires long enough to reach and still be able to close up the plug. That's why I have more recently started calling professionals for most electrical (and plumbing) work.
 
JOhnH said:
"white to silver" and "black to brass"?
Click to expand...
That's the typical color scheme.

Even then, the green, white and black wires were so tight, and did not line up properly with the color codes screws making it nearly impossible to make the wires long enough to reach and still be able to close up the plug.
Click to expand...

Also typical...
 
Story time!

The ceiling fan in my older son's room let out its magic smoke* only a short decade or so ago, so the time had come to replace it.

I was expecting to find a regular junction box with a hot and a neutral, but probably not a ground due to the age of the house. Ha ha ha! Read on.

It took me a while to figure out the topology. There was a hot coming in, one going out to the switch, and one coming back from the switch. Bonus points: it turned out that my younger son's room was wired downstream of the hot side of the switch.

Oh, and all of the fabric insulation crumbled whenever I touched it.

Non-contact voltage testers are your friend. Also, phantom voltage is a thing.

* I totally called the cause of death on the old fan, BTW. It had some horrible relay network to control the fan speed; if you switched from speed A to B, you could hear the A relay click off, and, a short time later, the B relay clicked on. On that fateful day, one relay must have stuck, so that both relays were on, causing a short, and vaporizing one of the pcb traces. Smells like victory.

I replaced it with a ceiling fan with a brushless motor (yay! no humming) and an integrated LED light. Guess what? The control nugget still uses relays...
 
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texasclouds said:
Yea, I am going to need to see pics of this gadget to provide a solution.
Click to expand...

Its not too exciting. Just a wall mounted calendar that syncs with our phones.
I will likely be traveling a lot soon and my kids have a lot of crap that fills their schedules and it can be difficult to know what is happening and when, if you are a man.
This is supposed to make me stop saying "Let me ask my wife" when someone says "can we get together?"

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If you want a 5 minute solution,

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I've been using these to add led light strips to porcelain sockets in my sheds. Put a LED bulb in the socket and leave it on. Bulb won't draw any more power than your device.

To do it better gets complicated, and judging by your response to the wire color question, well...

Honestly it's pretty simple and would be a good learning project. Yellow wire nuts and 2003 build, it's probably #12 wire, which will support a 15A outlet, assuming the circuit isn't already loaded up. If you're interested in doing it right, I'm sure we can point you in the right direction. If it was me, I'd probably go with option one unless I couldn't stand leaving the light on for some reason.
 
Look at the bright side…..this thread has really shined a light on me
 
I should point out something from my years of beating my head against facility electric issues.

OUTLET refers to anything that consumes electricity. Lights are outlets, motors are outlets, etc... The thing you stick plugs into is an outlet, but it's specifically a RECEPTACLE outlet.
 
So I am now looking at 2 options. The cleanest would be to piggyback an outlet off one on the opposite wall.
The simplest I think is to convert the switch to a combo suggested by @Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe above.

1732893006378.png1732893763915.png

The existing switch is just sending power in and back out downstream.
My guess is the power is coming in the black wire connected to the screw and going out the top to the light and the other bottom black wire is a pass through.
Neutral is bypassing the switch altogether.

What I am not sure about is if the potential new switch is a single circuit or 2.
I don't want the light switch to control the outlet. I want the outlet always on and the switch just to control the current light fixture.

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