Wiring light+ receptacle

Am I getting this right? I do alot of wiring and thought this up in about 5 seconds. This circuit is in a room that is unfinished and some wiring is from 1960. The wiring is in perfect condition, it uses armored cable with conductors that are 12 awg. There are 2 lights, one is switched one isnt. The one that isnt uses those lights that you pull the string to turn on and off. I want to switch both lights with one switch. I am going to use the existing switch. Can I use 12/3 and use red for switched hot and blk for receptacle hot and share common?

Post edited by: rgsgww, at: 2008/07/05 21:28

rqsgww welcome to the forum

Are you talking about sharing neutrals?

Yes, though Ive got it..but I ran into a problem. My box isn't deep enough for new wire splices, and I discovered the wire coming in is 14/3 wire. When the circuit was turned off, there was another wire live in the j-box. After 30mins of turning the wrong breakers off and removing the cover of my breaker box I found the breaker. When I decide to go get a deeper box and some armored cable connectors..a tornado warning was issued for my area. When it passed no stores were open and I need to keep the circuit live because a freezer is on it. So right now theres an "open" j-box with safely terminated wires, not really code but should do overnight...I made sure the connectors were very very tight.

O wow. A tornado. I hope you and yours and everybody else are OK? For a person not ever having gone through a tornado (and not keen on wanting to either) this sounds very scary...

It's good you found the problem though. I hope you soon get to finish completing the project. Will you let me know if all works out ok?

The tornado missed me and actually no homes were hit! Well today I got my box and bx connectors and got it wired. I ran into a problem though, when I wired my second light the circuit breaker would trip when I flipped the switch...odd, so I checked for wrong wiring...it checked out fine. Confused, I decided to pull my old multi meter out and check the red wire (switched hot) and then touched ground. I got a full connection to ground. So I pulled the romex from the romex connector at the box and noticed very small amount of black, I pulled some sheathing off and saw a nick in the red wire. The red wire was a little black, so I cut it off and re-wired the light. Went to the service panel and prayed while turning the breakers on. Once I flipped the switch. It worked! So I pulled a good load on the circuit for about 12 mins while cleaning up. Nothing bad happened. From doing this the lights were actually a little brighter, maybe it was a loose wire I tightened. The total cost was about $30-not bad.

Ey, I am glad to hear the tornado didn't hit anything (or worse anybody)

Very sharp thinking of you. I am happy you got it solved now and thanks for explaining the whole "procedure" so others might take advantage of it if and when they run into something like this as well