Red, Green, Black, and White Wires

This has actually been rather interesting. You can split the outlet and feed it with two phases. This is called a multi-wire branch circuit and the conductors feeding the split outlet must be on a 2 pole breaker. No jerryrigging is involved.

What spooked me with the OP was he said when ever he turned either switch on there is power at the outlet. It /sounded/ like someone was switching the neutral OR the oulet was simply on a 3-way switch, any way it didn't sound right.

I just got off the phone with my local (state) Inspector and to my amazement I may no longer be licensed, that sucks because I hold/held a masters. I originally called about the split outlet because I just could not find it in the code book and he let me know about the new licensing schedules around here. I know that the neutral was at one time called the identified conductor in the code book but I couldn't find that either, odd.

WOW, this thread went a lot of places and I hope the original poster got his answer.

is

You are feeding 120 VAC to each outlet, with a common neutral. It's called a split outlet. There are also combo duplex outlets with a 240 VAC and a 120 VAC receptacle used in commercial buildings to plug in large floor buffers and vacs.

part numbers HBL5492 & HBL5492I at:

Leviton has their 5031-I, 5842-I, 5844 on page 51 of

which is a 30.691 Mbyte download.

Unless you are DAMN SURE you're the only one who will EVER touch this wiring, and that you will 100% REMEMBER that the green is hot, then bite the bullet and pull a black strand through the conduit. Green means safe to electricians, you don't want somebody down the road to shock and potentially injure themselves because of the ambiguous color coding.

It

The red strand is often used to run a 2nd hot, so that you can run two circuits with one run of 4-strand wire. On a 240V 4-wire circuit, red and black are opposite poles, with 240v between them. white is neutral. red to white and/or black to white would both give you 120v. Red to black gives

It's so that you can run a separate circuit to each plug-in on the receptacle. Four conductors must have been run from the main panel in the house to the subpanel. This is good. It means you can wire up a 240v circuit if you need it.

You are a moron...

You are more than a moron...

You are a record moron...

Hey, Phil, you are so much better than I am at this, please add to my comments!

...or just don't feed the trolls. They starve. Problem solved.

jak