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I want to install a ceiling fan in my living room where currently there is no overhead light, just an outlet controlled by a switch. Where I'm confused is that the bottom socket of the outlet (controlled by switch) has a red wire connected to it. The black wire is pig tailed with all the others and the white wire is connected to all the whites. Ideally I would expect to find the same 3 wire behind the single pole light switch (red, black, white), but there is only a 2 wire there (black & white) with the white connected to one screw of the switch and the black to the other.
Common sense tells me that the red wire in the outlet serves as the conductor of power for that outlet, managed by the switch. Therefore, the switch should have the red wire on one of the screws and the black (hot) on the other. Hit the switch and now the red at the outlet becomes HOT. This goes out the window when the red does not exist anymore by the time i get to the switch. Why would this be?
I wanted to leave the outlet hot all the time and throw a line from the light fixture to the switch, using the hot as my source of power and connecting the whites together to create the circuit, now I'm lost. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
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