On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:48:24 -0600, 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.

How can one connect something to each traveler without connecting to
both?

There's a three-way switch at one end fo the travelers, and the
specifiec connection at the other, right?