Hi all,
I need help trying to stop this driving me mad... I would like to turn on two lights at the same time, but from one switch. The lights are in the kitchen and breakfast room that is being made into one room. Due to the design from the people I bought the property from the ceilings are on different levels and getting access from one side to the other is near impossible.
So I'm running the two separate lights back to the one switch... but I've also found that the switch that currently works just the kitchen also supplies power to the downstairs toilet (just to confuse matters).
Can anyone please explain a way around this headache and the constant tripping.
Sorry it's long, but it needs explaining
Thanks:confused:

Power into switch will also run to basement bathroom. Always hot. The power out at the switch will go to both lights. May have to wire the 2 lights together and a 3rd wire to the switch

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Originally Posted by esquire1

Power into switch will also run to basement bathroom. Always hot. The power out at the switch will go to both lights. May have to wire the 2 lights together and a 3rd wire to the switch

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Unfortunately I can't wire the two together, different ceiling hights, and I'm not touching the ceiling or floor baords.

I believe the right way to do this is create a full circuit. One wire from switch to light 1, then from light 1 to light 2 then from light 2 back to switch.

You might be able to make this work by splicing both wires from each light into one and connecting that to the switch. But I don't think that's advisable.

Hi ScottGem

Many thanks for this. It does help, to a degree, but why would this not be advisable - what would happen?

Thanks

Now we get a little out of my depth, but we get into issues of capacity. A wall switch is not designed for such things.

Ok let me see if I have the correct, you have a switch feeding one light, and you brought the cable from the other light to the switch?

Assuming the switch already has a feed to it:

The two blacks, one from each light connect to the load side of the switch, here you need to splice the two blacks together with a short piece of wire to create a "pigtail, which connects to the one load side screw teminal of the switch.

The to whites, from each of the cables coming back from the two lights, splice onto the white (neutral) already in the switch box.

You say the switch box also feeds the basement, so there existing in the switch bos should be :

2 wire feed into the switch box
2 wire feed-thru to the basement
2 wire switched cable to light #1
2 wire switched cable to new light #2

Is this all correct?

The box may not be able to handle all of these wires.

Assuming they are all #14 wires/cables and assuming they are all Romex each with the bare ground wire, you will have a total of 9 #14 wires, (all the grounds are counted as one).

Each of the 9 wires need 2.0 cubic inch of space, plus one 2.0 for the switch, for a total of 20 cubic inch of volume of space in one box.

The box needs to be at least a 4" x 4" x 1.5 inch deep box, to contain all these wires and one device. If the existing box is smaller than this, then the box is too small.

So how do you have these wires connected, to be causing the breaker to trip?

Thanks for that last piece of advice, I'm going to have to go away and re-think this... thanks for the input