Light Switch and Electrical Outlet

18 years ago

All of our bedrooms in our house did not have light fixtures in the celing. There is a light switch that controls an electrical outlet. The electrical outlet has a lamp plugged into it and you can turn your light swich on and off to the lamp. We put in new celing fans on our own and the celing fans work fine with the light switch now, but not the top of the electrical outlets. The botton plug in of the outlets work but not the top plug in of the outlet. Any suggestions on how we can fix this without having to call an electrican out?

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Comments (8)

billhart
18 years ago
Tell us more about what wires you disconnected and connected when you installed the fan.
hexus
18 years ago
If the bottom works and the top doesn't the outlets were made to be "half hots". The bottom half is always hot and the top is switched.
It's done by breaking the tab on the side of the outlet that connects both receptacles together.
If you're wanting to make both the top and bottom of the outlet constantly hot now, you need to replace the entire receptacle with one that doesn't have the tab broken.
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User
18 years ago
"If you're wanting to make both the top and bottom of the outlet constantly hot now, you need to replace the entire receptacle with one that doesn't have the tab broken."

I'd just jumper across the tab. No need for a new receptacle in this case.
hexus
18 years ago
Seems like a lot more work to me than to just replace a $0.33 outlet....
User
18 years ago
Aside from the Reduce, Reuse Recycle aspect of it, there's drive
time to consider. If you've already got a spare then it may make
more sense to replace it.
hendricus
18 years ago
If you jumper it you have to use the backstab feature unless its #12 wire , then you have to wire nut 2 pigtails on the hot. Still have to run to the store for wirenuts and wire to pigtail. Best to swap out the outlet which may be worn out anyway.
ctbosox
18 years ago
billhart said it all, and I don't think it would be as easy as jumping out the top and bottom, the supply was disconnected somewhere along the way, maybe I'm reading it wrong, but seems to me the top half is wired but the supply was cut off somewhere., and I guess its a personal choice, but I wouldn't want all the outlets and ceiling lights/fans going off with the wall switch.
louann1
Original Author
18 years ago
Thank you all for your help. Two of the bedroom outlets are now working by replacing them. I had one bedroom where it didn't work quite right by replacing the outlet. The original outlet where the bottom plug in didn't work and the top did, had a white wire on the top left and a black wire on the top right of the top plug in. It had a black wire on the bottom left and a white and black wire on the bottom right of the bottom plug in. We then replaced the whole outlet with a new one and wired it the exact same way as the old one and this then caused the ceiling light to be on all the time and it bypassed the light switch. So we put the old outlet back in and the light switch works now but still no bottom plug in working. Do we need both a white and a black wire on the bottom right plug in? Any direction is much appreciated.