On Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 4:38:22 PM UTC-4, bob haller wrote:
On Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 4:27:44 PM UTC-4, Mayhem wrote:
On 05/14/2015 03:44 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
Just curious.. In many houses I've owned I've added electrical outlets
by tapping into the electric that comes into the box where the light
switch is. Usually I put the added electric outlet down by the floor
like most outlets are. Is tapping into the lighting circuit to add
outlets any sort of code violation? The only thing I can think is
that it obviously adds more potential draw to the lighting circuit but
it's still protected by it's breaker so other then the lights going
off if the breaker trips it doesn't matter. Does the code prohibit
mixing lights and outlets on the same circuit or anything? I've had
old houses that actually had a plug as a factory part of the light
fixture over the sink.


I don't know but I'd guess that if a new outlet was installed in a bedroom,
the receptacle would have to be on an arc fault breaker.

its a bad idea, since a tripped breaker will turn out the lights. so current code keeps them seperated......

AFAIK, there is no code requirement to keep receptacles on a
separate circuit from lights. And Ashton could tap into a
light circuit for an additional outlet. As M pointed out,
if it's being added in an area that now requires, AFCI, GFCI, etc
then those issues are supposed to be dealt with, but
that's a different subject.