High level, simple question about house wiring.

[Fred Bloggs]

Active8 wrote:

And that's most likely why they won't pass something unconventional
and they don't want to hear a lecture about why something should be
passed and how much better it is or "I'm an engineer." I met an EE
gal once who told me how rough it was having to learn her job from
the plant master electrician We could've made out buying stock in
index tabs she had so many in her code book

Just to add to your warning... to be totally safe working with
existing circuits, put the breaker in your pocket and use any and
all applicable lockouts. Then stop and think what could go wrong.

The right way to add any number of switches to control a single load is
by use of 4-way switches which are functionally ganged 3-way's. The
3-way's are required on the ends, and the additional 4-way's are in between:
Please view in a fixed-width font such as Courier.


4-WAY SW
(ganged 3-way)
+-----------------+
| o----+--|A'
A|------o/ | |
| o--+ | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| o--+----|B'
B|------o/ | |
| o----+ |
| |
+-----------------+





4WAY 4WAY 4WAY
+------+ +------+ +------+
+-------|A - A'|--|A - A'|--|A - A'|-------+
| | X | | X | | X | |
| +-----|B - B'|--|B - B'|--|B - B'|-----+ |
| | +------+ +------+ +------+ | |
| | +----------------------------------+ | |
| | | | | |
| | | +-----+ | |
| | +----------------------+ |+------+ |
| +-----------------------+| ||+-------+
+------------------------+|| |||
||| |||
+---------+ ||| ||| +--------+
| C | ||| ||| C | |
| +---------+ ||| ||| +----+----+ |
| | o | ||| ||| | o | |
| | | ||| ||| | | |
--L------+ | | o SW0 o | ||| ||| | o SW1 o | |
--N---+ | | A +---------+ B ||| ||| A +---------+ B |
| | | | | ||| ||| | | |
| | | +-----------+|| ||+-----+ | |
| | | +------+| |+------------+ |
| +---|--------------------+ +-------------------+
| |
| | 3-WIRE EXTENSION
| +------------+ REQUIRED
+-----------------+ |
| |
EXISTING-> | | FLIP ANY SWITCH TO TOGGLE
| |
| |
+-+ |
| |
| +----+
| |BULB|
| +----+
| |
+---+