Light Switch Wiring Qtn

Alright, I just replaced a light switch in my bedroom (and I'm not even crispy) and it left me wondering, "what the heck?"

To wire a new light in, how does one run the wires from the fuse (yes, fuse - not breaker). I assume you run a wire to the light directly from the fuse, then run another wire to the light switch from the fixture.

Eg.


FUSE ---wire----> LIGHT -----wire----> SWITCH

Is this correct? I'd like to re-wire my room so the light switch at the top of the stairs doesn't control them anymore. It's one of those nifty 'main switch upstairs, secondary switches downstairs' setups as the basement didn't use to be a livable room.

Thanks in advance, electrical smarty-folk.

-Whir

[Siliconjunkie]

I assume this is what you have now: http://www.handymanwire.com/articles/3wayswitch.html

This looks like it has both options on how to wire a single switch depending on where the power comes in:
http://www.homewiringandmore.com/swi...ghtswitch.html

It's actually not a three way switch. The upstairs switch turns the power on to the entire downstairs, while the switch in my room feeds off of that and turns my lights on and off.

Regardless, those links cleared it up for me, thanks. I be a wirin' fool this week.

If you don't see me for a while, it's because I yanked the wrong fuse.

[Knothead]

I'd like to help, but...

Knothead + electricity = Martoch's avatar.

Seriously...there's like three ways of wiring a light switch...two of which will kill you, and I forget the other one.

One thing I DO know, and that is don't even take the switch panel off until you've turned the current off.

[MTAtech]

Actually, the wires (hot and neutral) go to the switch first but only the hot goes through the switch. The neutral bipasses it. then the wires go to the fixture.

This way, if one turns off the switch there isn't just lack of a circuit but there is no power to the fixture.