I have a single light swich in my home office. I want to have a second swich to wire and control an exhaust fan yet to be installed. I would like to install a swich that has 2 swiches in it as to avoid the installation of a 2 gang bow. What do I do?? And how do I do it. The is one romex presently in the wall box.

Mike barnett

Find out what amp. Your line is and make sure your new switch is rated for that amp. If you are going to use the orginial box and have room in the orginial box you can buy a double pole switch that fits in a single box, It's the same size as a single pole switch but there are two switches one top one bottom. Check to make sure the original switch has the hot line into (black) and that's were the hot feed starts. It is possible the original switch coud be wired past the light and broken on the nutureal side and the actual hot stops in the light fixture box. If so no go. If the light Check. If you have a hot feed you can use that to energize one switch and run a small jumper off that to energize the switch. Usually the douple pole switch has a "common" on it and that makes both switches hot with no jumper wire. Don't forget to check and tie in your neutral(White) togther and ground property. Also some wireing might be wired that the one white wire is a hot and the installer didn't coat the end of that wire black to show it's changed. Just because you see a white wire doen't it awalys neutral

I Have another question, I've installed the exhaust fan in the ceiling of my office. From where do I get the power from?


Mike Barnett

First off, the switch does NOT have to be rated for the same size as the circuit. It must be rated for the load it is switching. It is rare to have a 20A switch in a residential application.

Also, you do NOT want a "double pole" switch. You need a stack, or duplex, switch. There is a big difference.


OK, the circuit right now is wired as a switch loop. What Boat says in the end applies. What you have is the white bringing in the power and the black is the switch leg. You do not have a neutral in that box.

You need to find a feed first, and then snake new wires to the existing switch box. You CANNOT do what you want with the existing wiring.

There is no step-by-step diagram for what you want to do. Every situation is different.
Are you comfortable finding a feed and snaking wires?

If you want, you can use network power line controls. The glitch is the wall outlet requires a nuetral. Insteon comes to mind. This method is not cheap.

Strats idea works too.

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