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Originally Posted by Titan2
My new house has two switches by the front door. There are small hallways leading away from the door and each has a switch that controls the light above the door. The light at the door turns on the outdoor light and ... nothing. I assume there is a wiring issue and that it should turn on the light at the door as well. Is it common to have a 3-way (hehe) switch? How can I figure out what the problem is with the switch past taking off the plate and checking the wires?
Also, we have a nunber of mystery swithches throughout the house. How can we find out what these control? Am I into hiring an electrician territory?
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I had this. My electrician laughed at me for thinking it was a useless switch and then demonstrated how it works to me by submitting his guess as to what it did. It controlled an outlet outside above the door. He plugged in a testing light and it turned off an on with a flick of the switch.
What's the point of a switch you can control outside that's 10 ft up? Christmas lights.
I had a ton of other switches I had no clue what they did. Then I realized they were for outlets. So for instance, they could plug in a lamp at a specific outlet and then turn it off at the switch without going all the way to the lamp. I pulled up some pics of the house before my refresh and I realized some switches went to outlets on the wall because there used to be display lights that plugged into those outlets and illuminated a painting below it.
I don't think you can randomly have dead switches or switches that aren't connected to anything (ie: It's not safe, might be against code etc.). I think one of the first things for you to do is to figure out what the switches do is figuring out the logic of the people of the era of the build. After that, it's figuring out if the switches are live and then wandering around to figure out where it possibly could end up. Look for "dead outlets" in your house and then see if the "useless switches" cause the outlets to suddenly have power. An electrician would basically be doing the same thing, but perhaps might have a better idea for a guess, but you'd have to pay them for that. Another thing to do is figure out if there's a really thin slider which is a dimmer slider on the switch. I had some of those as well and some of the sliders were reversed (slide up for dim and down for bright and vice versa). Move them to the middle instead of assuming top or bottom. The switches look almost identical to a normal switch, but has a 1mm line to the side where the slider sits.