receptacle wired from switch?

The switch should have a "hot" leading to it and a switched leg going from there to the ceiling/closet light. You should be able to wire to that hot wire and pick up a neutral as well for the 120VAC. The applicable electrical code will depending on where you are located. Where I live in the US, the hot legs are usually black or blue depending on phase and the switched leg will be yellow, or orange, or another color. Neutral is always white. Make sure your wire gauge is correct to the breaker size. For 15A breaker, 14GA is required. For 20A, 12GA is required. Also, the third prong outlet ground will be need to be connected as well, unless you live in a location where a metal conduit is used and serves as the earth ground return to the breaker panel. Check and observe your local codes, but this should not be a difficult task

Bob

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Any large hardware store will have a book which covers enough code for this. Or try the library. If you violate code you may void your house insurance.

How is that consistent with light fixtures that have integral sockets?

Nec states that your suppose to have a different breaker(line) for lights from other lines.

And how is it consistent with switched the outlets that at least some codes appear to REQUIRE? The idea is that you will plug a lamp into the switched half of the receptacle, and turn it on from the switch by the entry to the room. My house, built 5 years ago, is full of them. I hate them, so I asked the construction electrician not to put them in. He said it is code, so if he didn't do it, it wouldn't pass the building inspector. So I now have a switched outlet in every room. In each case, a 14/2 w/g Romex comes from the breaker box to the wall switch. Then a 14/3 w/g Romex goes from the wall switch to the duplex outlet - the black (unswitched hot) to one half of the outlet, and the red (switched hot) to the other half of the outlet. I suppose it is consistent with your statement about NEC, since no light fixture is HARD-WIRED to the circuit - but there is no other purpose to a switched-outlet-in-every-room requirement other than a light.

Grumble grumble

Bill Jeffrey

Bypassing the switch is trivial. It is far easier than having to go the other way around and add a switch to a constantly on outlet.

Bob

My house (1979) had those annoying switched outlets in two of the upstairs bedrooms, it was common in places a lot back in the 70's though it's not often found in newer houses. I ran a new drop of Romex from a ceiling box down into the switchbox and then rewired the outlet box to feed power out the wire that originally went to the switch. Does it meet code? I'm not really sure, probably not, but most importantly it's safe, and of course it works.

Some parts of the electrical code are very nitpicky and other bits depend on locality. I know what I'm doing and I do my own wiring safely, though after seeing how the downstairs of my house was wired by the original owner and gradually redoing nearly all of it I'm very hesitant to recommend someone does their own wiring unless they truly understand it. I found switches on neutrals, wires cut so short they pulled out of backwired outlets and switches when I pulled them out of boxes, wire nuts that fell off at a touch, ground wires tangled together without a crimp or a wirenut, excessively stripped wires with bare sections hanging out, you name it.

Thanks to those who responded.

I've given up on attaching a duplex to the the switch. There are too many studs

and firestops between the switch and the location for the duplex. I'm in a

year old building in which there is no separate grounding wire in the electrical

wiring. Does this mean that the neutral serves as the ground? Also, it would be

an easy run to wire a duplex from the main panel to the location almost directly

below it, except that this old panel does not have a main circuit cut-off breaker.

How would a professional electrician work on this wiring if he could not turn off

the power? How would I wire the duplex to the panel when it is live? I assume I would pull the wire up from the duplex into the panel--having pre-stripped it--then connect to the duplex, then

connect to a new circuit breaker, then carefully push the CB into place. Is this how an

electrician would do it?

No. It means nothing is grounded, unless via the conduit or the metal sheathing of the cables (BX etc). Not a happy thought but that's how they did it.

Quite carefully.

Don't try it.