How is a switched outlet wiring
How to Wire a Switched Outlet
a question on how to change a switched
outlet and so I'll go through the steps
on how to change it and also how its
wired and always make sure you check the
electric before you start and shut it
off I like a non-contact tester what I
like about it is you have to depress it
to turn it on it shows you a light that
it's working and also gives you a chirp
and then you don't actually have to
touch the wire so that you know whether
the electrics I don't know
so always turn off the power before you
start but a switched outlet has one side
of the outlet always on so in this case
we've got a nonmetallic two wire cable
coming into this box we have the hot
going to a leg going up to the switch
and then we created a pigtail a little
wire going to the bottom of the outlet
now this hot from the service panel is
always on so this bottom part of the
outlet is always at and now we have this
second cable to wire cable coming into
this box we twisted that together with a
wire connector and it's going up to this
switch now from the switch because we're
using a two wire cable this white wire
which is normally in neutral we have to
mark it with black tape to let everybody
know that this is a hot wire it comes
down to the top part of this outlet and
now this top part will be controlled by
the switch and again we have to mark
this white with a piece of black tape or
black paint so that everybody knows this
is hot but we can't have both of these
screws with hot wires so what we have to
do when we replace this so we're going
to turn off the power unscrew the old
outlet and then on the new outlet our
hot wires will be connected to the brass
screw our neutral wire is going to be
going to the silver screw and our ground
wire to the green screw but on the
Heights hot side you're always going to
have this metal connecting tab so what
we have to do because we have two hots
we need to break this tab and you can
either use needle nose pliers or
diagonal pliers and we're just going to
grab it with the pliers and we're just
going to bend it back and forth and you
can hear it snap and now these are
completely distinct they're separated so
we can have one hot that's always going
to be on on the bottom and then our hot
on top is controlled by the switch so
very simple to do and that's the wiring
scheme for a switched outlet
