In article , Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 04:47:18 GMT, "Tom Horne, Electrician"
wrote:

wrote:
3. I noticed something very interesting in a 3-way switch arrangement
in my home. To power a receptacle, they grabbed an unswitched feed
from the light fixture by connecting a black wire to both travelers in
the box. Since there is always power on exactly one of them, this
seems to work. Is this allowable ?



Yes, it's called a loop switch.

It's fairly a common way to power a switch.

It also comes in handy when you want to switch half of an outlet.

Something is missing from your description here if you connect both
travelers to a load you would have connected them to each other and the
light would be on all of the time.

A lot of people say "both" when they mean "each". Connecting to EACH
traveler wouldn't cause the same problem.

Connecting the *same*thing* to each certainly will -- and connecting each
traveler to opposite sides of a receptacle results in a receptacle that never
works.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.