You’re thinking of a 3-way bulb. That’s a light bulb that goes into a lamp and has two filaments, and you can choose to use one filament, the other filament, or both filaments, giving 3 separate brightnesses. That’s not what Arlo did, because changing a lightbulb is not a big deal unless it’s the one at the top of the stairwell, two stories tall. He’s changed a simple switch to a 3-way switch, documented above.
Is there any end to my ignorance?
Actually I grew up in a house with a couple of these, but we never called them that. Nor saw reason to, since there was nothing threeish in their function.
It’s called a three-way switch because the circuit has three states: both switches on, both switches off, and one of each.
It’s actually quite a significant feat, changing a one-location switch+light (two-way) to a two-location switch+light (three-way). So if I were Arlo I’d be proud of it, too!
” there was nothing threeish in their function.”
Electricity needs a circle in order to work. In a single-throw switch, the switch in one position connects two conductor paths that each make up half of the circle, and the other position of the switch makes no connection.
A double-throw switch, on the other hand, has wire with three conductor paths in it. Let’s call them 1, 2, and 3. Each switch is always connected to path 2, but is then ALSO connected to EITHER 1 *OR* 3. When both switches are joined to the same conductor path, a circle is formed and the lights turn on; when one is connected to 1 and the other to 3 , no circle is formed and the lights stay off. By setting it up this way, either switch can turn on the lights (by being moved to the same conductor path as the other switch), and either switch can turn off the lights (by being moved to the other conductor path as the other switch) but it does produce one confusing effect for people who aren’t aware a particular switch is part of a 3-way configuration… the lights may be on with both switches down (which means “off” in a single switch setup) and the lights may be off with either one of the switches up.
Deciding you want two switches for a particular light is best done early, before the walls are on, because changing your mind later means running another wire in the walls, which is usually not easy and sometimes is VERY difficult. By contrast, going from 2 switches to just 1 doesn’t require new wiring and is relatively trivial.
Walter and James: here in the 21st century a second switch can be added without running wires.
Come August we will have lived in this house for 20 years, and I still can’t figure out the rhyme or reason behind some of our three-way switches.
After we moved to this house in June 2017, we replaced all the wallplates and the insides – plugs and switches, no idea what they’re called – and yes, we still haven’t figured out several of them (luckily, one can put in a blank so there isn’t a hole in the wall surrounded by a wallplate. We COULD hire an electrician to figure it out and straighten it out, but there are more pressing things that need to be done first. Twenty years from now – if we’re still alive and in this same house – we, too, will still be wondering at some of the rhyme or reason behind various switches. Let the next owners deal with it, I say. There won’t be much else left for them to do, that’s for sure!
A couple of years ago a young friend of mine came to help me replace the kitchen faucet. I knew what to do, and he had the muscle and the flexibility to get under the sink. After a tiny bit of cussing, (he’s ex-Mormon, not-cussing is ingrained) he got it in and working.
Now every time he comes over, he ever-so-casually wanders into the kitchen and turns on the faucet.
That’s Arlo in the first 3 panels?
Why’d he take off his shirt in the 4th panel? Oh, wait, it’s Arlo. I don’t want to know.
My house has a strange three-way switch. The family room has one, with a switch at either end of the room. On the circuit are a ceiling fan at one end and can lights at the other. So the only way to use the fan is to have those lights on. At least the fan has its own switch so that it doesn’t come on every time you want those lights on (they shine down behind the entertainment center.
Take the light bulbs out, and they’ll stay dark while the fan runs. Replace the incandescent bulbs with LED “bulbs” to avoid burning your fingertips off.
woozy – that’s Arlo in the first three panels, during the day right after he replaced the switch, looking blase. Then that’s Arlo in his pajamas; after Janis went to bed, he sneaked out to flick the switch and gloat.
CIDUBill: When we bought our our house 29 years ago, there were two switches in the upstairs laundry closet. One was the light; one did nothing. Being a good geek, I carefully left it in the OFF position.
A few years later, some workman is up in the attic in summer, tells me, “You attic fan isn’t working–it’s over 100F up there!” so I call an electrician. He goes up, pokes around, comes down, opens laundry closet and points to the switch. (Yeah, you saw that coming…)
Of course, since then we’ve replaced the roof and now have a passive ridge vent, so the switch is back to being meaningless, as God intended! If/when I sell, I plan to explain to new owner, save him some wondering.
Our old house, where we’d lived for 10 years, had a complete large fuse box we could never figure out the purpose of.(so it really came as a surprise when we were told we needed to upgrade it before we sold the house).
I’m sure somebody will guess what it was there for before day’s end.
I actually think Janis is at the other switch and they are playing on/off. That is why he is looking the same direction she looked when she mentioned the other switch.
Now, three way switches are called that because there are 3 wires needed to make them work. The hot in/out depending on if it is on the source (panel) end or the light end, and the two travelers between them. Now for more confusion, you can add any number of 4 way switches onto the travelers between the 3 ways and have additional locations to turn the lights on/off. A regular light switch is called a 2 way because it is just hot in/light out, 2 wires. They do make 3 way dimmers, it just has the traveler switching plus the rheostat built in.
Back when I was a kid, we had three-way switches at top and bottom of the steps–and they weren’t visible from one another. I learned to track my sister’s footsteps as she came out of her bedroom, and then as she’d hit the switch, I’d hit the other one. Net: nothing happened. I’d usually get three or four iterations before she’d figure it out and start yelling at me. Good times!
“I’m sure somebody will guess what it was there for before day’s end.”
Fuses for the servants’ quarters? The guest house?
One of the things I did for the new owner of our previous house was attach post-it notes to each switch ‘splaining what it was for. I sure wish that’d been done for us!
Our current house came with Post-It Notes as well.
Unfortunately, many of them were wrong.
We bought the house from a very nice woman who, unfortunately, was a bit of a ditz.
Well, one thing I am NOT is a ditz; have been a librarian and secretary for 30+ years, so I’m organized enough to put correct post-it notes on light switches; also make a up a binder with information, including warranties, etc.
And then there’s the four-way switch. If you ever want to have more than 2 switches controlling something (I don’t know why you would), you need two three-way switches and however many four-way switches you want.
The switch(es?) on our stairs is (are?) installed improperly. When the switch at the top and the bottom match, the light is on, when they are dissimilar it is off. It shouldn’t annoy me as much as it does (especially given some of the other interesting things about the construction here), but it drives me crazy.
MiB, at that point a thoroughly modern person would probably want to turn control over to a network home management system, and turn that light on or off from anywhere in the world.
One of the socially great things about Usenet was that it was distributed and asynchronous. A chat or forum (etc) today, centered on a fixed single server or address, presents comments in a single fixed order. How often do you see very similar comments in a row here, with the second person then saying in effect “Oh, I thought I was first. Honest, your post was not there when I started typing.”
But as Usenet involved often-delayed transmission over local steps, the list in a group as viewed in a reader using one server would be in a different order from the order shown on another person’s reader accessing a different local server. Like Special Relativity! And the observers could all — equally correctly (maybe) — see themselves as first.
My favorite instance that I myself participated in was in maybe the general rec.arts.tv or maybe a specialized subgroup (I forget these names). We didn’t in those days all have plot summaries for everything we saw on TV. “30something” did an episode based on Joyce’s “The Dead”, and as soon as I realized that I posted my surprise and delight. Within a couple minutes there were at least two others — but we each knew we were first, and had neighboring users who could back up that claim.
There were great features to usenet. Particularly, in that there was only one. There were many groups, but you could always get a complete list of the ones that your server supported, and look through them to see what would be of interest. With web forums you have a hard time finding all the ones of interest. At its height, the usenet was a marvel. There were groups not too much different from CIDU in the numbers and frequency of posting. People really got to know each other in a virtual way.
I think it was my mistake posting that Usenet comment here — and maybe drawing Brian along to follow in that mistake. I thought it was going into that other thread, which is already about that.
I learned to put in three way switches when I helped my dad fix things at home as a girl. (Right now I am waiting about a year for Robert – with my help of course – to replace the downstairs bathroom regular switch and combined outlets as when I turn on the switch sometimes it does not come on – the part has been sitting on the kitchen table waiting to be put in. If I was really smart I would have done it myself while he could not freely walk around the house while he was in pain.
We had an outlet wired in the basement next to the circuit breaker box so that we could plug in a timer for a front outside outlet that we also had installed and this basement outlet was in the line. The timer was for our Christmas lights. eventually that timer died and we bought a wire in timer and did so where the outlet had been. I am in charge in of which breaker controls what (and this house was wired strange – one breaker covered the entire upstairs, another the living room wall switched outlets and dining room chandelier, another the kitchen, including the fridge – except an outlet under the table, although the outlet over the table is on the same circuit. Another breaker controls the bathroom (which is technically more or less set into the kitchen and the outlets in the living room and dining room. All of the upstairs except the air conditioner outlets and the circuits we had added are on one circuit. And so on. I did make a listing which matches the circuit breaker switches and it is attached to the inside of the breaker box door so I can find it easily.
Late November 2017 we went to set up the outside Christmas lights. I went in the basement and turned on the outside outlet circuit. (We keep the front outlet circuit off when not using it.) I turned on the timer and even remembered to switch the switch to on. We had no electricity in the outlet. We spent about 3 hours trying to resolve the problem. When we had new siding put on the idiots from the siding place attached the front outside outlet box to only the siding so I have to be careful as I am always afraid that the siding will break – (we really need to attach it through siding to the wall under the siding). No luck. In the process of this the plate in the electric box is now a bit loose and we ended up using gorilla tape to tape the plate to the box so it does not move. We were in tears and the only thing we could figure was an expensive electrician visit. Robert went down to the basement to make sure that I had really turned the switch on and to see what he could see.
Remember I said that we had this circuit added? Well, there are 2 outdoor circuits – the other which was in the house when we bought it is for a light in the backyard. It is labeled outdoor outlet. The one we wanted says “front outdoor outlet”. Not only had I not turned on the correct circuit, I had actually shut the other one off. This is how I know I he really loves me – one quick burst of how could you not think to check this? was all I heard about it – then again, in December 2018 he went down and turned on the circuit.
I really miss Usenet. Alt.support.menopause had a great group of regulars and the conversations were intelligent and wide-ranging.
The mystery of the big extra fuse box:
To accommodate a ton of Christmas lights.
My own odd Usenet experience: when I was homeschooling my older son, I became a member of a Homeschooling group and became friendly with one particular homeschooling mom. Turned out they lived about a mile away from us, which really made no sense at all, and for the next couple of years we all went on outings together.
(Though never to the same place twice because when my son and her daughter were together, they were a bit… spirited, and we got the feeling we wouldn’t be welcomed back)
If that was installed when those big bulbs were all there were, it would make sense to have an extra fuse box (fuses, and not breakers, I assume).
I think it was my mistake posting that Usenet comment here
Eh, stuff happens.
I think it was my mistake posting that Usenet comment here
But at least you were first to do so! Counts for something!
Well, we bought the house in 1989, and I have no concept of what sort of bulbs were being used: all I know is that 10 years later, n electrician told us the box was there because the previous owners needed a lot of power for Christmas lights
Their last name wasn’t Griswold, was it?
Their name was White, which resulted in one of the most difficult “hold your tongue” moments of my life:
When they were first showing us their house, Mrs. W mentioned “the family next door is black, but they’re okay,” and every fiber of my being wanted to respond “Well, that’s very white of you.”
How often in your life do you get such a perfect set-up line?
‘-) . . . and what a shame you didn’t get to use it!
I would have — but we were having a tough time finding a house and we were under severe time pressure.
“Our current house came with Post-It Notes as well.”
Mine came with a nice as-built diagram for the breaker panel. It didn’t include the changes made between being built and coming into my possession, however. It was fairly accurate, except where it wasn’t.
“The switch(es?) on our stairs is (are?) installed improperly. When the switch at the top and the bottom match, the light is on, when they are dissimilar it is off.”
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
The other ones I’ve seen have been the other way around – it’s possible, if the light is off, to have everything look normal, with both switches in the off position. Once I explained to my husband what about it was driving me crazy, he agreed that similar switches should be the light off. So perhaps they had an American electrician working here, causing the problem. (This place was built by the lowest bidder, so we have lots of problems of the “they just weren’t paying attention” sort.)
For the record, my second wasted set-up line came when my glasses broke and I went into a vision center and the girl said there’s no change to do the repair, but I’ll need a screw and “A screw is five dollars,” and I managed not to ask “Same as in town?”
‘and I managed not to ask “Same as in town?”’
That must have been hard, or even difficult.
Re the positions of 3-way switches: That’s why I like the single-push-button 3-way switches. You *know* you can’t tell anything by looking at it.
I would agree with Christine about switch positions (matching is off), but our house has a “Heisenberg” quality: with one exception, it is impossible to observe both of the paired switches at the same time. Since I cannot see which way the other switch is set, it really doesn’t matter.
P.S. Another odd factor is that most (single) toggle switches in Germany are installed so that “down” is “on”. This is not an absolute standard; in our house the switches were inconsistent, but I flipped a few of them to achieve uniformity (and since I was doing it, I picked “down is off”).
In theory it shouldn’t bother me either, for the exact reason you list – I can’t see both switches at the same time. It took me a few days after we moved in to even realise that there was a problem, and then another few days to confirm it (I’m not proud of that latter part, but at least I wasn’t do it intentionally, which would have been much faster).
What’s also confusing is outlets that are controlled by a wall switch, but you don’t realize it at first and keep thinking the bulb is the issue. THEN trying to figure out which switch controls which outlet, or which half of which outlet. Fun times . . .
Christine, if your 3-way switch positions are driving you crazy, (makes me nuts, too – I want all switches to be down when the lights are off) Kilby’s solution is simple enough. It’s generally a trivial matter to remove the switchplate and flip one of the switches around. I don’t understand why an electrician wouldn’t pay attention to that detail during installation, but it seems to happen often.
DanV – That solution only works half the time (or if you always consistently use the same switch to turn the light on and off.). If you alternate switches, which frankly is one of the reasons for their being 3-ways, half the time the lights will be out with both switches in the on position.
My wife accuses me of being obsessive-compulsive, but strangely, switch positions don’t really bother me. If I can see whether the light is on or off, it’s just a matter of moving the switch to the other position, who cares if it is up or down? Our kitchen has 3-ways at both ends, but my wife will only use one of those switches, so that it is always in the ‘correct’ configuration. She ignores the other one, and complains if I use it and mess up the switches.
My current home has 3-ways all over the place. Most of them make sense, but there are two bedrooms that open across from each other, into a small hallway with a light. There is a 3-way next to each door for that light. If my arms were literally 6 inches longer, I could touch both switches at once. Really?
The light off with both switches in the on position is fine by me. (Ok, I lie, I would probably bias towards having them both off, but given that it’s the stairs it’s not like I would always have a choice.) But the fact that I CANNOT have both switches and the light be off at the same time drives me crazy. It’s the principle of the thing.
If you think that’s odd for an electrician to do, we recently had renovations here. In about half the units the bathroom fan was wired to the location closer to the door, with the light being further from the door. When they first went in, this was just a switch. Our unit was one of the ones with this done, and we kept turning the fan on when going for the light. (This was fixed when they came back and replaced the fan switches with timers, and you can tell them apart by feel now.)
“Once I explained to my husband what about it was driving me crazy, he agreed that similar switches should be the light off.”
Except that’s not how electricity works. If there’s a circuit, electricity flows, and if there’s no circuit, no electricity flows. To get the effect you want, either the lines have to cross, or one of the switches has to be connected backwards. Those are both unnecessary complications, and that’s why they are avoided, and what you want is likely to get an electrician looking at you as if you say, soundlessly, “you want WHAT?”
The way 3-way switches are put together, flipping either switch changes the current state of the electrical flow (i.e., if the lights are on, they go out, and if they are out, they come on.)
A couple years ago I had plumbing repair work done on a bathtub. The plumber was mostly replacing seals, around the overflow drain and the feed control knobs. There are separate hot and cold knobs — just one spout or spigot, where they mix, but not a mixer type control.
I feel secure in my memory that before this work was done, both knobs went the same way — clockwise for off and counter for on. So easy to get the right muscle-memory associations! Like screwing something down to close it off, and unscrewing to loosen and open.
The plumber (and my neighbor from the floor below, who was participating in this because of leak damage!) insisted that the normal thing for tub faucet knobs is to be opposite of each other. The hot, on the left, goes clockwise for on, counter for off; the cold, on the right, goes clockwise for off, counter for on. For the plumber and neighbor who thought this correct, the simpler conceptualization was “both inward towards the faucet for on — both outward away from the faucet for off — so you see they act the same way?”.
Does that make any sense??
What on earth does how a basic toggle 3-way switch work have to do with your imagined impossibility of the standard set-up of said switch?
If you notice, every other state shows the light toggling without the switches changing. You can either have the even lines or the odd ones as possible, because otherwise the light would change without the switches changing. Standard around here, and for everyone else in the thread who has commented, is that line 0,2,4 and 6 are possible. My house is 1,3,5 and 7. If you consider that to be setting up the switch backwards, so be it. But it is standard, and if you don’t like that fact, please find a way to express it other than implying that I don’t understand grade-school level circuits.
@ Christine – Even though DanV implied that “flipping” the switch is “easy” to do, I would not call it that. Our switches are large flat plates, so the “toggle” covers the entire surface (not like either of the models you linked to, but in principle closer to the second).
Theoretically I could remove the covers, loosen the switch, flip it around (if the wires are flexible and long enough), and then replace everything, but in practice the proper solution is to pull the switch out, and move the “hot” leads to the other pole of the double throw switch. This means (for obvious safety reasons) turning off the circuit breaker. Not a job I would recommend unless you know what you are doing.
In some cases analyzing what the previous electrician has done can be very challenging. It took me quite a while to figure out the arrangement in our living room (so that I could install a dimmer for one of the three lamps).
I might add, the plumber was in principle willing to go along with what he saw as my eccentric preference. The operation of the knob is mediated by a sort of double-threaded connector pin. But he didn’t have with him that day a spare second pin of the clockwise=off type, so couldn’t actually change it. He did offer to swap the two pins, so it would be inward=off / outward=on; but that didn’t strike me as any better.
A couple years later and I’m still not used to it at an intuitive level.
Christine, I think there was confusion about the meaning of “on” and “off”. You’re not wrong. James’ last graf is key, but you clearly already understood that.
Next time you build a house, mount the 3-way switches horizontally–then on/off won’t have meaning!
Mitch4: I’ve seen both, but I’m pretty sure standard is as plumber says. That’s why they sell hot and cold taps: it’s not like the guts are different, just the threads (and maybe the H/C caps). If someone had replaced one of the taps and hadn’t known this, they might have bought the “wrong” one. All would work, especially if the handle wasn’t integral and had the H/C on it, so all would look normal. I’ve seen this (usually in a grungy gas station restroom) and find it jarring, because my muscle memory expects the opposite behavior. (I’d also bet it’s not a long-lived solution in a public location for that reason: cranking the handle the wrong way is likely to wear it out faster!)
Fortunately this thread has not drifted AT ALL from the original comic! :)
Thanks for that link! If Don Norman accepts it, so must I.
Error in my table, I counted instead of doing a truth table. Please switch 010 with 011 and 101 with 100.
Kilby – after wiring in new outlets downstairs, it’s impossible to see doing work on ones that already exist as difficult. Do you have any idea how wrong it feels to do electrical work without throwing the breaker first? (we installed the breaker last for safety reasons). And despite all that, I still cannot bring myself to use both hands at the same time. (And yes, I know that electricians often have to do just that. It’s only us amateurs who can get away with that stunt.) That said, I’m reluctant to do much work around here (I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to do anyhow), for the same reason that the switches are wonky. For all I know they found some way to move the wire that’s supposed to link th common terminals to a different terminal, or otherwise make it impossible to work on (I don’t actually remember how the switches are wired inside, just how to install them).
And I know the kind of switch you’re talking about – It’s coming more and more into vogue here, I believe it’s more accessible. (Less convenient for the little shutters that you put over it so that the kids can pull on a handle to turn on the light, but c’est la vie).
Christine: I once asked a friend who fixed elevators for a living why he took his wedding ring off before leaving the house for the day. “Because this isn’t my original ring — i welded that one to a busbar early in our marriage”. Yeah, turn the power off! I’m always paranoid even then, short the wires with a screwdriver just to be sure they’re dead.
Sadly there’s a lot of “this is the way that I’m used to, so this is the way I’ll do it” when dealing with contractors, and it seems to be independent of there being a good reason for it, which is very annoying when you know just enough to get yourself in trouble: you’ll vociferously overrule the contractor 9 times because he’s doing it for no good reason, and you have your reason for wanting it your way (and who’s paying?), but then the 10th time you insist on something embarrassingly stupid because of your lack of experience…
One of the nine was when we were redoing our second bathroom: in the first, because of the construction of the wall and lack of space in the physical channel to the wall switch, they had to install a compact, two-switches-in-one-panel to control the two lights we were putting in. Turns out we liked that compact switch, and wanted the same for the second bathroom, where the limitation in the wall wasn’t an issue. We specified that switch, and then the electrician installed two boxes. We insisted on one box with the compact switch, and he replied that, no, we didn’t need it, there was space for two! And we replied that we didn’t care, we wanted only one. And he just couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. His younger assistant had to mediate between us, because he was just not going to install the compact switch if there was room for two full sized switches!
” But it is standard, and if you don’t like that fact”
Your “fact” isn’t a fact. If you don’t like that, complain about it on the Internet.
Has your need to be right escalated to flat-out lying, or do you have some sort of tortuous logic to back that up?
Please note that trying to pretend that I said it was universal isn’t going to fly.
… and then complain about it on the Internet some more.
Wait… do you honestly find what someone says as annoying as whether or not they lie?
I learn more and more about how brains work every day.
… and keep complaining until someone pays attention.
I dunno, you’re paying a fair bit of attention right now. Any better suggestions for an end condition when dealing with someone for whom pro-social behaviour is too confusing to practice?
Um, kids? Your mother and I are trying to watch TV over here. Think you could keep it down, or maybe take it outside?
@ Christine – Thank you for saying a few things that needed to be said, even if they fell on ears with the diodes wired in the wrong direction.
I was excessive (and forgot that I was spamming everyone who was subscribed to the thread). As was pointed out to me by a professional, one can never blame an excessively petty argument running long on just one person, no matter how many sigmas from appropriate they’re being.
@ Christine – Then back to wiring: I think installing new switches would be much easier than decoding existing work, but that may be partly because the contractors who did the original installation for our house were complete idiots. Dumb decision #1 was selecting switches and sockets from an obscure company in Finland, making replacement parts nearly impossible to find.
Christine – I feel your pain. :(
@Kilby – is there a reason beyond aesthetics that they need to match? Or is something else about them odd too? (Around here there are multiple styles of switches and outlets, but they all have basically the same terminals, and switching one for another is easy). That said, the only place we’ve lived with a mix of three different switch styles was our old apartment. When this place, where the issues with the switch aren’t actually surprising given the general build quality, is an improvement, that tells you about where we moved from. (The problems here are really only problems because they were done wrong. There isn’t anything wrong with how they’re done, aside from the fact that it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Having to shim the furniture isn’t the same as structural problems.)
@ Christine – There is absolutely no reason that the positions of the paired switches “need” to match (for “off” or “on”), other than simple aesthetics (some people might call this an OCD issue). The flips I did were only on the “single” switches, so that at least they would be uniform, but since the pairs make up roughly1/3rd of all the switches we have, the overall “uniformity” is only approximate.
Sorry, I was addressing your comment that you can’t get the replacement parts. I agree that the positions of the switches don’t *need* to match. (My anxiety issues are mild enough that I’m probably better off having a switch set up this way, because it forces me to learn to live with it rather than shutting me down). If I did work on it I’d fix it obviously, but I don’t know that I’d do work on it myself. (We’re in a co-op, and I’m sure that “the TSSA inspector had no issues with the wiring we did downstairs” would go a long way towards getting us permission to do our own work, but non-electricians doing work anywhere other than their own home is iffy, and since we don’t technically own the place…)
I’d probably object more to bringing in a non-matching switch than to the current pairing of the switch positions. (Not in general, but specifically having the two ends of the three way switch not matching seems excessive.)
@ Christine – The replacement problem is compounded by the fact that virtually all of our switches and sockets are in pairs or triples. The toggles are plastic, so if one breaks and needs to be replaced, it means I have to replace not just the entire switch, but also all the other switch(es) and/or socket(s) in the set, since the new toggles and faceplates are not compatible with the older equipment. Keeping everything uniform means you only have to have one kind (or brand) of replacement parts, but that is only an advantage if the replacements are available.
When I installed a dimmer switch in the living room, I had to swap out the other two switches in the 3x set, too. The new design is not an exact match, but it’s so close that you would probably never notice. The effort (and expense) didn’t bother me that much, because I was able to cannibalize both of the old switches, and used their toggles to replace cracked ones elsewhere in the house.
Ok, that’s what I was wondering. There are multiple different cosmetic designs for compatible switches available here, and if there was a problem we’d be able to install a mis-matched switch. I can totally understand why you contemplate just replacing things. At least then the bulk of the work is on your own time, and if there’s a repair you need to make later it’s a much smaller job.
@Mitch4: I’ve been thinking about it (in the shower, no less!), and I’ve come to the conclusion that not only should Don Norman grudgingly accept the handles turning in opposite directions, he should embrace it as the superior solution (with the caveat that the handles must not be radially symmetrical — there must be at the very least one straight line projecting from only one side, the extreme of which is lever-type handles).
Since modern taps don’t turn more than a quarter turn (I have those in my guest bathroom), and even with old kind, you actually never go beyond a quarter turn (I have those kind grand-fathered in in my master bathroom — you could turn them multiple turns, but for a shower, you never even get close to turning it more than a quarter turn), what you have is taps with the handles facing outwards as the closed position. So, with your eyes closed, you can instantly identify whether you have the left or the right handle, based on which way the line of the handle is facing, so you know whether you have the hot or cold tap, or at the very least, the right or the left tap (plus, of course, the cold tap is going to feel colder than the hot tap). Also, since you only have a quarter-turn of play, you know that turning the handle toward the horizontal is closing, and turning it to the vertical is opening — it doesn’t even matter if you have the handles upsidedown (like in my guest bathroom) where you turn them up to turn on, or “regular”, where you turn them down to turn on. In the off position, they will only turn one way, and in any on position, you turn toward the horizontal to turn off. It has all the hallmarks Norman is looking for of discountability and all that. If the handles all turn the same way, with your eyes closed, you might know which way to turn it for on or off, but you don’t know which handle you have, so that is inferior (no offense!).
“discountability”?? Stupid auto-correct! (And proof that modern UI designers are not familiar with Norman!) “Discoverability” is not a word according to the auto-spell-check of my browser…
Interesting, larK.
BTW, my mental autocorrect handled “discountability” according to your actual intention.
Mitch4 – Once while my family was on a trip I burned my dad. I went to turn off the water running in the sink as I was done washing my hands – and the darn sink handles (apparently) turned backwards to those at home – and I turned hot water up full rather quickly and it shot out of the sink and burned my dad. (And yet, I remained his favorite per the valentine card he gave me one year – oh wait, he wrote the same thing in the valentines of all three of us.)
Reading the posts I was reminded of two things – one real, one from a TV show.
Our house was built in 1950 (some things say 1949) and there has been only limited updating since then (which I am trying to convince the county tax assessor’s office of so that they will lower their new reassessment). When we bought it we did not realize that there was no electric outlet in either of bathrooms – no electric shaver or blow hair dryer with 3 children who grew to adulthood here? As we moved stuff in we found this problem. (We moved in for a couple of weeks as we lived a few blocks away and brought what we did not the mover to carry over here little by little.) So we found electrician and had him come to install the outlet. I showed him where we wanted it – on the wall opposite the sink so Robert could easily reach it to shave. he could not do that as there was no electric line there. I had 2 choices – next to the switch (which was the distance of the toilet bowl from the sink and would involve pulling his shaver cord over the toilet bowl to the sink and would be just short of usable, or over the sink. I had him put it over the sink -which meant the only light in the bathroom had to be moved to the front of the ceiling over the sink to make room for the outlet. (Have I mentioned we have small bathrooms? The one downstairs is a half bathroom and is about 4 ft x4ft and the upstairs one is the same size plus the tub.) I cannot reach the outlet in the upstairs bathroom. (We later had an outlet installed next to the switch in the downstairs bathroom – and a new set of same has been sitting on the kitchen table for about 6 months as it needs to replaced.)
There is some TV show – I want to say “Friends”, but I am not sure, in which there is an electric switch in apartment and the characters cannot figure out what it works. Eventually we find out it works a light in a different apartment (hence why “Friends” comes to mind) and the people in that apartment can never figure out why one of their lights goes on and off at random and they cannot find a switch for it.
Robert came downstairs – he said maybe the light switch is from “Mad About You”.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Arlo is pretending to be a blasé electrician, but actually he’s thrilled with his accomplishment, and perhaps also with Janis’s appreciation of it.
A 3-way switch is a dimmer. That’s a remote switch.
No, a 3-way switch allows you to control something from either of two switches.
Three-way switch. Not up for debate. https://www.easy-do-it-yourself-home-improvements.com/wiring-a-3-way-switch.html
“A 3-way switch is a dimmer.”
You’re thinking of a 3-way bulb. That’s a light bulb that goes into a lamp and has two filaments, and you can choose to use one filament, the other filament, or both filaments, giving 3 separate brightnesses. That’s not what Arlo did, because changing a lightbulb is not a big deal unless it’s the one at the top of the stairwell, two stories tall. He’s changed a simple switch to a 3-way switch, documented above.
Is there any end to my ignorance?
Actually I grew up in a house with a couple of these, but we never called them that. Nor saw reason to, since there was nothing threeish in their function.
It’s called a three-way switch because the circuit has three states: both switches on, both switches off, and one of each.
It’s actually quite a significant feat, changing a one-location switch+light (two-way) to a two-location switch+light (three-way). So if I were Arlo I’d be proud of it, too!
” there was nothing threeish in their function.”
Electricity needs a circle in order to work. In a single-throw switch, the switch in one position connects two conductor paths that each make up half of the circle, and the other position of the switch makes no connection.
A double-throw switch, on the other hand, has wire with three conductor paths in it. Let’s call them 1, 2, and 3. Each switch is always connected to path 2, but is then ALSO connected to EITHER 1 *OR* 3. When both switches are joined to the same conductor path, a circle is formed and the lights turn on; when one is connected to 1 and the other to 3 , no circle is formed and the lights stay off. By setting it up this way, either switch can turn on the lights (by being moved to the same conductor path as the other switch), and either switch can turn off the lights (by being moved to the other conductor path as the other switch) but it does produce one confusing effect for people who aren’t aware a particular switch is part of a 3-way configuration… the lights may be on with both switches down (which means “off” in a single switch setup) and the lights may be off with either one of the switches up.
Deciding you want two switches for a particular light is best done early, before the walls are on, because changing your mind later means running another wire in the walls, which is usually not easy and sometimes is VERY difficult. By contrast, going from 2 switches to just 1 doesn’t require new wiring and is relatively trivial.
Walter and James: here in the 21st century a second switch can be added without running wires.
https://www.amazon.ca/RunLessWire-3-Way-Wireless-Switch-configurations/dp/B01JJVN0FM
Come August we will have lived in this house for 20 years, and I still can’t figure out the rhyme or reason behind some of our three-way switches.
After we moved to this house in June 2017, we replaced all the wallplates and the insides – plugs and switches, no idea what they’re called – and yes, we still haven’t figured out several of them (luckily, one can put in a blank so there isn’t a hole in the wall surrounded by a wallplate. We COULD hire an electrician to figure it out and straighten it out, but there are more pressing things that need to be done first. Twenty years from now – if we’re still alive and in this same house – we, too, will still be wondering at some of the rhyme or reason behind various switches. Let the next owners deal with it, I say. There won’t be much else left for them to do, that’s for sure!
A couple of years ago a young friend of mine came to help me replace the kitchen faucet. I knew what to do, and he had the muscle and the flexibility to get under the sink. After a tiny bit of cussing, (he’s ex-Mormon, not-cussing is ingrained) he got it in and working.
Now every time he comes over, he ever-so-casually wanders into the kitchen and turns on the faucet.
That’s Arlo in the first 3 panels?
Why’d he take off his shirt in the 4th panel? Oh, wait, it’s Arlo. I don’t want to know.
My house has a strange three-way switch. The family room has one, with a switch at either end of the room. On the circuit are a ceiling fan at one end and can lights at the other. So the only way to use the fan is to have those lights on. At least the fan has its own switch so that it doesn’t come on every time you want those lights on (they shine down behind the entertainment center.
Take the light bulbs out, and they’ll stay dark while the fan runs. Replace the incandescent bulbs with LED “bulbs” to avoid burning your fingertips off.
woozy – that’s Arlo in the first three panels, during the day right after he replaced the switch, looking blase. Then that’s Arlo in his pajamas; after Janis went to bed, he sneaked out to flick the switch and gloat.
CIDUBill: When we bought our our house 29 years ago, there were two switches in the upstairs laundry closet. One was the light; one did nothing. Being a good geek, I carefully left it in the OFF position.
A few years later, some workman is up in the attic in summer, tells me, “You attic fan isn’t working–it’s over 100F up there!” so I call an electrician. He goes up, pokes around, comes down, opens laundry closet and points to the switch. (Yeah, you saw that coming…)
Of course, since then we’ve replaced the roof and now have a passive ridge vent, so the switch is back to being meaningless, as God intended! If/when I sell, I plan to explain to new owner, save him some wondering.
Our old house, where we’d lived for 10 years, had a complete large fuse box we could never figure out the purpose of.(so it really came as a surprise when we were told we needed to upgrade it before we sold the house).
I’m sure somebody will guess what it was there for before day’s end.
I actually think Janis is at the other switch and they are playing on/off. That is why he is looking the same direction she looked when she mentioned the other switch.
Now, three way switches are called that because there are 3 wires needed to make them work. The hot in/out depending on if it is on the source (panel) end or the light end, and the two travelers between them. Now for more confusion, you can add any number of 4 way switches onto the travelers between the 3 ways and have additional locations to turn the lights on/off. A regular light switch is called a 2 way because it is just hot in/light out, 2 wires. They do make 3 way dimmers, it just has the traveler switching plus the rheostat built in.
Back when I was a kid, we had three-way switches at top and bottom of the steps–and they weren’t visible from one another. I learned to track my sister’s footsteps as she came out of her bedroom, and then as she’d hit the switch, I’d hit the other one. Net: nothing happened. I’d usually get three or four iterations before she’d figure it out and start yelling at me. Good times!
“I’m sure somebody will guess what it was there for before day’s end.”
Fuses for the servants’ quarters? The guest house?
One of the things I did for the new owner of our previous house was attach post-it notes to each switch ‘splaining what it was for. I sure wish that’d been done for us!
Our current house came with Post-It Notes as well.
Unfortunately, many of them were wrong.
We bought the house from a very nice woman who, unfortunately, was a bit of a ditz.
Well, one thing I am NOT is a ditz; have been a librarian and secretary for 30+ years, so I’m organized enough to put correct post-it notes on light switches; also make a up a binder with information, including warranties, etc.
And then there’s the four-way switch. If you ever want to have more than 2 switches controlling something (I don’t know why you would), you need two three-way switches and however many four-way switches you want.
The switch(es?) on our stairs is (are?) installed improperly. When the switch at the top and the bottom match, the light is on, when they are dissimilar it is off. It shouldn’t annoy me as much as it does (especially given some of the other interesting things about the construction here), but it drives me crazy.
MiB, at that point a thoroughly modern person would probably want to turn control over to a network home management system, and turn that light on or off from anywhere in the world.
One of the socially great things about Usenet was that it was distributed and asynchronous. A chat or forum (etc) today, centered on a fixed single server or address, presents comments in a single fixed order. How often do you see very similar comments in a row here, with the second person then saying in effect “Oh, I thought I was first. Honest, your post was not there when I started typing.”
But as Usenet involved often-delayed transmission over local steps, the list in a group as viewed in a reader using one server would be in a different order from the order shown on another person’s reader accessing a different local server. Like Special Relativity! And the observers could all — equally correctly (maybe) — see themselves as first.
My favorite instance that I myself participated in was in maybe the general rec.arts.tv or maybe a specialized subgroup (I forget these names). We didn’t in those days all have plot summaries for everything we saw on TV. “30something” did an episode based on Joyce’s “The Dead”, and as soon as I realized that I posted my surprise and delight. Within a couple minutes there were at least two others — but we each knew we were first, and had neighboring users who could back up that claim.
There were great features to usenet. Particularly, in that there was only one. There were many groups, but you could always get a complete list of the ones that your server supported, and look through them to see what would be of interest. With web forums you have a hard time finding all the ones of interest. At its height, the usenet was a marvel. There were groups not too much different from CIDU in the numbers and frequency of posting. People really got to know each other in a virtual way.
I think it was my mistake posting that Usenet comment here — and maybe drawing Brian along to follow in that mistake. I thought it was going into that other thread, which is already about that.
I learned to put in three way switches when I helped my dad fix things at home as a girl. (Right now I am waiting about a year for Robert – with my help of course – to replace the downstairs bathroom regular switch and combined outlets as when I turn on the switch sometimes it does not come on – the part has been sitting on the kitchen table waiting to be put in. If I was really smart I would have done it myself while he could not freely walk around the house while he was in pain.
We had an outlet wired in the basement next to the circuit breaker box so that we could plug in a timer for a front outside outlet that we also had installed and this basement outlet was in the line. The timer was for our Christmas lights. eventually that timer died and we bought a wire in timer and did so where the outlet had been. I am in charge in of which breaker controls what (and this house was wired strange – one breaker covered the entire upstairs, another the living room wall switched outlets and dining room chandelier, another the kitchen, including the fridge – except an outlet under the table, although the outlet over the table is on the same circuit. Another breaker controls the bathroom (which is technically more or less set into the kitchen and the outlets in the living room and dining room. All of the upstairs except the air conditioner outlets and the circuits we had added are on one circuit. And so on. I did make a listing which matches the circuit breaker switches and it is attached to the inside of the breaker box door so I can find it easily.
Late November 2017 we went to set up the outside Christmas lights. I went in the basement and turned on the outside outlet circuit. (We keep the front outlet circuit off when not using it.) I turned on the timer and even remembered to switch the switch to on. We had no electricity in the outlet. We spent about 3 hours trying to resolve the problem. When we had new siding put on the idiots from the siding place attached the front outside outlet box to only the siding so I have to be careful as I am always afraid that the siding will break – (we really need to attach it through siding to the wall under the siding). No luck. In the process of this the plate in the electric box is now a bit loose and we ended up using gorilla tape to tape the plate to the box so it does not move. We were in tears and the only thing we could figure was an expensive electrician visit. Robert went down to the basement to make sure that I had really turned the switch on and to see what he could see.
Remember I said that we had this circuit added? Well, there are 2 outdoor circuits – the other which was in the house when we bought it is for a light in the backyard. It is labeled outdoor outlet. The one we wanted says “front outdoor outlet”. Not only had I not turned on the correct circuit, I had actually shut the other one off. This is how I know I he really loves me – one quick burst of how could you not think to check this? was all I heard about it – then again, in December 2018 he went down and turned on the circuit.
I really miss Usenet. Alt.support.menopause had a great group of regulars and the conversations were intelligent and wide-ranging.
The mystery of the big extra fuse box:
To accommodate a ton of Christmas lights.
My own odd Usenet experience: when I was homeschooling my older son, I became a member of a Homeschooling group and became friendly with one particular homeschooling mom. Turned out they lived about a mile away from us, which really made no sense at all, and for the next couple of years we all went on outings together.
(Though never to the same place twice because when my son and her daughter were together, they were a bit… spirited, and we got the feeling we wouldn’t be welcomed back)
If that was installed when those big bulbs were all there were, it would make sense to have an extra fuse box (fuses, and not breakers, I assume).
I think it was my mistake posting that Usenet comment here
Eh, stuff happens.
I think it was my mistake posting that Usenet comment here
But at least you were first to do so! Counts for something!
Well, we bought the house in 1989, and I have no concept of what sort of bulbs were being used: all I know is that 10 years later, n electrician told us the box was there because the previous owners needed a lot of power for Christmas lights
Their last name wasn’t Griswold, was it?
Their name was White, which resulted in one of the most difficult “hold your tongue” moments of my life:
When they were first showing us their house, Mrs. W mentioned “the family next door is black, but they’re okay,” and every fiber of my being wanted to respond “Well, that’s very white of you.”
How often in your life do you get such a perfect set-up line?
‘-) . . . and what a shame you didn’t get to use it!
I would have — but we were having a tough time finding a house and we were under severe time pressure.
“Our current house came with Post-It Notes as well.”
Mine came with a nice as-built diagram for the breaker panel. It didn’t include the changes made between being built and coming into my possession, however. It was fairly accurate, except where it wasn’t.
“The switch(es?) on our stairs is (are?) installed improperly. When the switch at the top and the bottom match, the light is on, when they are dissimilar it is off.”
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
The other ones I’ve seen have been the other way around – it’s possible, if the light is off, to have everything look normal, with both switches in the off position. Once I explained to my husband what about it was driving me crazy, he agreed that similar switches should be the light off. So perhaps they had an American electrician working here, causing the problem. (This place was built by the lowest bidder, so we have lots of problems of the “they just weren’t paying attention” sort.)
For the record, my second wasted set-up line came when my glasses broke and I went into a vision center and the girl said there’s no change to do the repair, but I’ll need a screw and “A screw is five dollars,” and I managed not to ask “Same as in town?”
‘and I managed not to ask “Same as in town?”’
That must have been hard, or even difficult.
Re the positions of 3-way switches: That’s why I like the single-push-button 3-way switches. You *know* you can’t tell anything by looking at it.
I would agree with Christine about switch positions (matching is off), but our house has a “Heisenberg” quality: with one exception, it is impossible to observe both of the paired switches at the same time. Since I cannot see which way the other switch is set, it really doesn’t matter.
P.S. Another odd factor is that most (single) toggle switches in Germany are installed so that “down” is “on”. This is not an absolute standard; in our house the switches were inconsistent, but I flipped a few of them to achieve uniformity (and since I was doing it, I picked “down is off”).
In theory it shouldn’t bother me either, for the exact reason you list – I can’t see both switches at the same time. It took me a few days after we moved in to even realise that there was a problem, and then another few days to confirm it (I’m not proud of that latter part, but at least I wasn’t do it intentionally, which would have been much faster).
What style of switch do you have that down is off? Is it like https://www.google.com/search?q=light+switch&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjEk8bRrfHfAhWh0YMKHa8RDB0QsAR6BAgEEAE&biw=1920&bih=944#imgrc=sEN48CrYjwhsYM: or more like https://www.google.com/search?q=light+switch&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjEk8bRrfHfAhWh0YMKHa8RDB0QsAR6BAgEEAE&biw=1920&bih=944#imgrc=3JHCSNUjeZqzYM: ?
What’s also confusing is outlets that are controlled by a wall switch, but you don’t realize it at first and keep thinking the bulb is the issue. THEN trying to figure out which switch controls which outlet, or which half of which outlet. Fun times . . .
Christine, if your 3-way switch positions are driving you crazy, (makes me nuts, too – I want all switches to be down when the lights are off) Kilby’s solution is simple enough. It’s generally a trivial matter to remove the switchplate and flip one of the switches around. I don’t understand why an electrician wouldn’t pay attention to that detail during installation, but it seems to happen often.
DanV – That solution only works half the time (or if you always consistently use the same switch to turn the light on and off.). If you alternate switches, which frankly is one of the reasons for their being 3-ways, half the time the lights will be out with both switches in the on position.
My wife accuses me of being obsessive-compulsive, but strangely, switch positions don’t really bother me. If I can see whether the light is on or off, it’s just a matter of moving the switch to the other position, who cares if it is up or down? Our kitchen has 3-ways at both ends, but my wife will only use one of those switches, so that it is always in the ‘correct’ configuration. She ignores the other one, and complains if I use it and mess up the switches.
My current home has 3-ways all over the place. Most of them make sense, but there are two bedrooms that open across from each other, into a small hallway with a light. There is a 3-way next to each door for that light. If my arms were literally 6 inches longer, I could touch both switches at once. Really?
The light off with both switches in the on position is fine by me. (Ok, I lie, I would probably bias towards having them both off, but given that it’s the stairs it’s not like I would always have a choice.) But the fact that I CANNOT have both switches and the light be off at the same time drives me crazy. It’s the principle of the thing.
If you think that’s odd for an electrician to do, we recently had renovations here. In about half the units the bathroom fan was wired to the location closer to the door, with the light being further from the door. When they first went in, this was just a switch. Our unit was one of the ones with this done, and we kept turning the fan on when going for the light. (This was fixed when they came back and replaced the fan switches with timers, and you can tell them apart by feel now.)
“Once I explained to my husband what about it was driving me crazy, he agreed that similar switches should be the light off.”
Except that’s not how electricity works. If there’s a circuit, electricity flows, and if there’s no circuit, no electricity flows. To get the effect you want, either the lines have to cross, or one of the switches has to be connected backwards. Those are both unnecessary complications, and that’s why they are avoided, and what you want is likely to get an electrician looking at you as if you say, soundlessly, “you want WHAT?”
The way 3-way switches are put together, flipping either switch changes the current state of the electrical flow (i.e., if the lights are on, they go out, and if they are out, they come on.)
A couple years ago I had plumbing repair work done on a bathtub. The plumber was mostly replacing seals, around the overflow drain and the feed control knobs. There are separate hot and cold knobs — just one spout or spigot, where they mix, but not a mixer type control.
I feel secure in my memory that before this work was done, both knobs went the same way — clockwise for off and counter for on. So easy to get the right muscle-memory associations! Like screwing something down to close it off, and unscrewing to loosen and open.
The plumber (and my neighbor from the floor below, who was participating in this because of leak damage!) insisted that the normal thing for tub faucet knobs is to be opposite of each other. The hot, on the left, goes clockwise for on, counter for off; the cold, on the right, goes clockwise for off, counter for on. For the plumber and neighbor who thought this correct, the simpler conceptualization was “both inward towards the faucet for on — both outward away from the faucet for off — so you see they act the same way?”.
Does that make any sense??
What on earth does how a basic toggle 3-way switch work have to do with your imagined impossibility of the standard set-up of said switch?
S1 S2 L
0 0 0
0 0 1
0 1 0
0 1 1
1 0 0
1 0 1
1 1 0
1 1 1
If you notice, every other state shows the light toggling without the switches changing. You can either have the even lines or the odd ones as possible, because otherwise the light would change without the switches changing. Standard around here, and for everyone else in the thread who has commented, is that line 0,2,4 and 6 are possible. My house is 1,3,5 and 7. If you consider that to be setting up the switch backwards, so be it. But it is standard, and if you don’t like that fact, please find a way to express it other than implying that I don’t understand grade-school level circuits.
@ Christine – Even though DanV implied that “flipping” the switch is “easy” to do, I would not call it that. Our switches are large flat plates, so the “toggle” covers the entire surface (not like either of the models you linked to, but in principle closer to the second).
Theoretically I could remove the covers, loosen the switch, flip it around (if the wires are flexible and long enough), and then replace everything, but in practice the proper solution is to pull the switch out, and move the “hot” leads to the other pole of the double throw switch. This means (for obvious safety reasons) turning off the circuit breaker. Not a job I would recommend unless you know what you are doing.
In some cases analyzing what the previous electrician has done can be very challenging. It took me quite a while to figure out the arrangement in our living room (so that I could install a dimmer for one of the three lamps).
I might add, the plumber was in principle willing to go along with what he saw as my eccentric preference. The operation of the knob is mediated by a sort of double-threaded connector pin. But he didn’t have with him that day a spare second pin of the clockwise=off type, so couldn’t actually change it. He did offer to swap the two pins, so it would be inward=off / outward=on; but that didn’t strike me as any better.
A couple years later and I’m still not used to it at an intuitive level.
Christine, I think there was confusion about the meaning of “on” and “off”. You’re not wrong. James’ last graf is key, but you clearly already understood that.
Next time you build a house, mount the 3-way switches horizontally–then on/off won’t have meaning!
Mitch4: I’ve seen both, but I’m pretty sure standard is as plumber says. That’s why they sell hot and cold taps: it’s not like the guts are different, just the threads (and maybe the H/C caps). If someone had replaced one of the taps and hadn’t known this, they might have bought the “wrong” one. All would work, especially if the handle wasn’t integral and had the H/C on it, so all would look normal. I’ve seen this (usually in a grungy gas station restroom) and find it jarring, because my muscle memory expects the opposite behavior. (I’d also bet it’s not a long-lived solution in a public location for that reason: cranking the handle the wrong way is likely to wear it out faster!)
And here’s a Quora thread for you: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-handles-of-hot-and-cold-water-faucets-turn-in-different-directions
Fortunately this thread has not drifted AT ALL from the original comic! :)
Thanks for that link! If Don Norman accepts it, so must I.
Error in my table, I counted instead of doing a truth table. Please switch 010 with 011 and 101 with 100.
Kilby – after wiring in new outlets downstairs, it’s impossible to see doing work on ones that already exist as difficult. Do you have any idea how wrong it feels to do electrical work without throwing the breaker first? (we installed the breaker last for safety reasons). And despite all that, I still cannot bring myself to use both hands at the same time. (And yes, I know that electricians often have to do just that. It’s only us amateurs who can get away with that stunt.) That said, I’m reluctant to do much work around here (I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to do anyhow), for the same reason that the switches are wonky. For all I know they found some way to move the wire that’s supposed to link th common terminals to a different terminal, or otherwise make it impossible to work on (I don’t actually remember how the switches are wired inside, just how to install them).
And I know the kind of switch you’re talking about – It’s coming more and more into vogue here, I believe it’s more accessible. (Less convenient for the little shutters that you put over it so that the kids can pull on a handle to turn on the light, but c’est la vie).
Christine: I once asked a friend who fixed elevators for a living why he took his wedding ring off before leaving the house for the day. “Because this isn’t my original ring — i welded that one to a busbar early in our marriage”. Yeah, turn the power off! I’m always paranoid even then, short the wires with a screwdriver just to be sure they’re dead.
Sadly there’s a lot of “this is the way that I’m used to, so this is the way I’ll do it” when dealing with contractors, and it seems to be independent of there being a good reason for it, which is very annoying when you know just enough to get yourself in trouble: you’ll vociferously overrule the contractor 9 times because he’s doing it for no good reason, and you have your reason for wanting it your way (and who’s paying?), but then the 10th time you insist on something embarrassingly stupid because of your lack of experience…
One of the nine was when we were redoing our second bathroom: in the first, because of the construction of the wall and lack of space in the physical channel to the wall switch, they had to install a compact, two-switches-in-one-panel to control the two lights we were putting in. Turns out we liked that compact switch, and wanted the same for the second bathroom, where the limitation in the wall wasn’t an issue. We specified that switch, and then the electrician installed two boxes. We insisted on one box with the compact switch, and he replied that, no, we didn’t need it, there was space for two! And we replied that we didn’t care, we wanted only one. And he just couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. His younger assistant had to mediate between us, because he was just not going to install the compact switch if there was room for two full sized switches!
” But it is standard, and if you don’t like that fact”
Your “fact” isn’t a fact. If you don’t like that, complain about it on the Internet.
Has your need to be right escalated to flat-out lying, or do you have some sort of tortuous logic to back that up?
Please note that trying to pretend that I said it was universal isn’t going to fly.
… and then complain about it on the Internet some more.
Wait… do you honestly find what someone says as annoying as whether or not they lie?
I learn more and more about how brains work every day.
… and keep complaining until someone pays attention.
I dunno, you’re paying a fair bit of attention right now. Any better suggestions for an end condition when dealing with someone for whom pro-social behaviour is too confusing to practice?
Um, kids? Your mother and I are trying to watch TV over here. Think you could keep it down, or maybe take it outside?
https://scontent.ftpa1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/49937713_10218014650987066_1966652240504553472_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_eui2=AeHbSuARxp-FvOwFFrSpzFuU9wMllKroUGPz8dRRAzUss8Sptowers9FF9Z0XDFCuRKN91Id1-qu2sSmReEYGLe1JAT4EtHKVOBEarM-NUjgQg&_nc_ht=scontent.ftpa1-2.fna&oh=c72e4a823941e7dbf24c6ad3385fdd6c&oe=5CC67173
@ Christine – Thank you for saying a few things that needed to be said, even if they fell on ears with the diodes wired in the wrong direction.
I was excessive (and forgot that I was spamming everyone who was subscribed to the thread). As was pointed out to me by a professional, one can never blame an excessively petty argument running long on just one person, no matter how many sigmas from appropriate they’re being.
@ Christine – Then back to wiring: I think installing new switches would be much easier than decoding existing work, but that may be partly because the contractors who did the original installation for our house were complete idiots. Dumb decision #1 was selecting switches and sockets from an obscure company in Finland, making replacement parts nearly impossible to find.
Christine – I feel your pain. :(
@Kilby – is there a reason beyond aesthetics that they need to match? Or is something else about them odd too? (Around here there are multiple styles of switches and outlets, but they all have basically the same terminals, and switching one for another is easy). That said, the only place we’ve lived with a mix of three different switch styles was our old apartment. When this place, where the issues with the switch aren’t actually surprising given the general build quality, is an improvement, that tells you about where we moved from. (The problems here are really only problems because they were done wrong. There isn’t anything wrong with how they’re done, aside from the fact that it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Having to shim the furniture isn’t the same as structural problems.)
@ Christine – There is absolutely no reason that the positions of the paired switches “need” to match (for “off” or “on”), other than simple aesthetics (some people might call this an OCD issue). The flips I did were only on the “single” switches, so that at least they would be uniform, but since the pairs make up roughly1/3rd of all the switches we have, the overall “uniformity” is only approximate.
Sorry, I was addressing your comment that you can’t get the replacement parts. I agree that the positions of the switches don’t *need* to match. (My anxiety issues are mild enough that I’m probably better off having a switch set up this way, because it forces me to learn to live with it rather than shutting me down). If I did work on it I’d fix it obviously, but I don’t know that I’d do work on it myself. (We’re in a co-op, and I’m sure that “the TSSA inspector had no issues with the wiring we did downstairs” would go a long way towards getting us permission to do our own work, but non-electricians doing work anywhere other than their own home is iffy, and since we don’t technically own the place…)
I’d probably object more to bringing in a non-matching switch than to the current pairing of the switch positions. (Not in general, but specifically having the two ends of the three way switch not matching seems excessive.)
@ Christine – The replacement problem is compounded by the fact that virtually all of our switches and sockets are in pairs or triples. The toggles are plastic, so if one breaks and needs to be replaced, it means I have to replace not just the entire switch, but also all the other switch(es) and/or socket(s) in the set, since the new toggles and faceplates are not compatible with the older equipment. Keeping everything uniform means you only have to have one kind (or brand) of replacement parts, but that is only an advantage if the replacements are available.
When I installed a dimmer switch in the living room, I had to swap out the other two switches in the 3x set, too. The new design is not an exact match, but it’s so close that you would probably never notice. The effort (and expense) didn’t bother me that much, because I was able to cannibalize both of the old switches, and used their toggles to replace cracked ones elsewhere in the house.
Ok, that’s what I was wondering. There are multiple different cosmetic designs for compatible switches available here, and if there was a problem we’d be able to install a mis-matched switch. I can totally understand why you contemplate just replacing things. At least then the bulk of the work is on your own time, and if there’s a repair you need to make later it’s a much smaller job.
@Mitch4: I’ve been thinking about it (in the shower, no less!), and I’ve come to the conclusion that not only should Don Norman grudgingly accept the handles turning in opposite directions, he should embrace it as the superior solution (with the caveat that the handles must not be radially symmetrical — there must be at the very least one straight line projecting from only one side, the extreme of which is lever-type handles).
Since modern taps don’t turn more than a quarter turn (I have those in my guest bathroom), and even with old kind, you actually never go beyond a quarter turn (I have those kind grand-fathered in in my master bathroom — you could turn them multiple turns, but for a shower, you never even get close to turning it more than a quarter turn), what you have is taps with the handles facing outwards as the closed position. So, with your eyes closed, you can instantly identify whether you have the left or the right handle, based on which way the line of the handle is facing, so you know whether you have the hot or cold tap, or at the very least, the right or the left tap (plus, of course, the cold tap is going to feel colder than the hot tap). Also, since you only have a quarter-turn of play, you know that turning the handle toward the horizontal is closing, and turning it to the vertical is opening — it doesn’t even matter if you have the handles upsidedown (like in my guest bathroom) where you turn them up to turn on, or “regular”, where you turn them down to turn on. In the off position, they will only turn one way, and in any on position, you turn toward the horizontal to turn off. It has all the hallmarks Norman is looking for of discountability and all that. If the handles all turn the same way, with your eyes closed, you might know which way to turn it for on or off, but you don’t know which handle you have, so that is inferior (no offense!).
“discountability”?? Stupid auto-correct! (And proof that modern UI designers are not familiar with Norman!) “Discoverability” is not a word according to the auto-spell-check of my browser…
Interesting, larK.
BTW, my mental autocorrect handled “discountability” according to your actual intention.
Mitch4 – Once while my family was on a trip I burned my dad. I went to turn off the water running in the sink as I was done washing my hands – and the darn sink handles (apparently) turned backwards to those at home – and I turned hot water up full rather quickly and it shot out of the sink and burned my dad. (And yet, I remained his favorite per the valentine card he gave me one year – oh wait, he wrote the same thing in the valentines of all three of us.)
Reading the posts I was reminded of two things – one real, one from a TV show.
Our house was built in 1950 (some things say 1949) and there has been only limited updating since then (which I am trying to convince the county tax assessor’s office of so that they will lower their new reassessment). When we bought it we did not realize that there was no electric outlet in either of bathrooms – no electric shaver or blow hair dryer with 3 children who grew to adulthood here? As we moved stuff in we found this problem. (We moved in for a couple of weeks as we lived a few blocks away and brought what we did not the mover to carry over here little by little.) So we found electrician and had him come to install the outlet. I showed him where we wanted it – on the wall opposite the sink so Robert could easily reach it to shave. he could not do that as there was no electric line there. I had 2 choices – next to the switch (which was the distance of the toilet bowl from the sink and would involve pulling his shaver cord over the toilet bowl to the sink and would be just short of usable, or over the sink. I had him put it over the sink -which meant the only light in the bathroom had to be moved to the front of the ceiling over the sink to make room for the outlet. (Have I mentioned we have small bathrooms? The one downstairs is a half bathroom and is about 4 ft x4ft and the upstairs one is the same size plus the tub.) I cannot reach the outlet in the upstairs bathroom. (We later had an outlet installed next to the switch in the downstairs bathroom – and a new set of same has been sitting on the kitchen table for about 6 months as it needs to replaced.)
There is some TV show – I want to say “Friends”, but I am not sure, in which there is an electric switch in apartment and the characters cannot figure out what it works. Eventually we find out it works a light in a different apartment (hence why “Friends” comes to mind) and the people in that apartment can never figure out why one of their lights goes on and off at random and they cannot find a switch for it.
Robert came downstairs – he said maybe the light switch is from “Mad About You”.
I think Friends is probably correct:
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-figure-out-what-mystery-light-switch-is-for-224020
Brian in STL – I win!