Does your house have a mystery switch?

Mine does. At the top and bottom of the stairs there are 2 switches. One controls the light on the stairs, the other doesn't do a Damn thing. 

What makes it more interesting, I think, are the switches that don't do anything have a very heavy, loud clunk to them, similar to flipping a breaker. 

We also have a ceiling light, on the other side of the house, that isn't connected to any switch we can find. Just a fixture in the ceiling. I've replaced the bulb and tried this mystery switch, and nothing happened, so safe to assume they're not related. 

What about your house, New or old?

We have a switch in the kitchen that is for the light that is no longer there, for the slider (that is also no longer there).  Why did they put the switch in you ask? Well I asked the same thing, apparently it’s code, you just can’t remove the switch... ?!

Both switches probably control the same bulb but the traveler between switches is not connected properly or broken

I have one by the breaker box in my living room. It replaces the mystery switch that was there but now it's wired to turn off the outside lights. Or at least it will be when I finish hooking it up. 

My cottage has an empty box in the wall that never even had the knock outs knocked out. 

When we closed on our house the POs actually said “Good luck figuring out the electrical.”

In reply to RevRico :

Since I wired my house, there are no mysteries.  

We found ours when doing trim repair. Had 3 wires under the trim that went to the mystery switch. Now we have lights for the front, back and on the garage doors. Have one light on the other end of the house but haven't found the switch yet.

Bruce

No mystery switch, but when I went to replace the switch for the kitchen sink light, I found that the kitchen apparently does not go through the breaker box... or the auxiliary box next to it.... or a mystery fuse box in the basement bathroom.

So I replaced the switch live.  Be nice to know where the fuse/breaker is for future reference, though.

House is full of stuff like that.  The main floor's bathroom sink drain was just some random pieces of pipe loosely pushed into themselves, as I discovered when I removed the J-trap and the stuff in the wall sort of fell into the basement.

[hugs my two owner 1950s ranch home with no surprises]

House was built in 2001.  One switch that does nothing is for a circuit is for a blower for the gas logs that the builder/PO didn't think was necessary and so never installed.  There's another one in the kitchen.  I have no idea what that one's for.

We just have a couple faux outlets because when i rewired the house 2 days into ownership, a couple just weren’t possible to pull new wires to without cutting into walls that had to stay for a while.  

I have a mystery wire that goes from the basement to the attic that doesn't appear to power anything and a light switch by the front door that powers a wire on the other side of a door going into a junction box on the other side of said door, hidden behind the curtains. Why not disconnect it you say? Well somewhere in the 6 feet between them the wiring changes. Yep, different wires at the switch and coming out the wall on the other side.

Yup, three switch panel in the master bedroom.  One for the ceiling fan, one for light, the other one...???  I always assumed it was just an extra and unwired.  I have another right next to me as I type this in the family room.  No idea...

In reply to Knurled. :

We have 4 breaker boxes daisy-chained. And a 5th one in our bedroom, behind a picture over our bed. Oh, and there’s a couple breakers outside too, for the water heater in the master bath. 

Our 1955 house has one, I consider it a “spare.”

Apropos, one of my favorite commercials:

In a rental house we owned, there was a motion sensor light on the side of the house, so the downstairs tenants could get around to their entrance in the dark. It worked when we looked at the house originally, but only worked sporadically ever after. We tried everything, including having the tenants turn on every circuit in the house. We eventually gave up and called in an electrician. The house had a central vent fan for the bathrooms, and the PO had wired the motion sensor light to that circuit, so that the light was only energized when the vent fan was turned on in both bathrooms simultaneously!

Rodan said:

Yup, three switch panel in the master bedroom.  One for the ceiling fan, one for light, the other one...???  I always assumed it was just an extra and unwired.  I have another right next to me as I type this in the family room.  No idea...

Check and see if the "extra" switch operates one of the electric outlets, and check both outlets in each receptacle.

Mother berker, that's why the light over my kitchen sink keeps turning on and off for no reason! I couldn't find a switch for it, either! 

NOT A TA said:

Rodan said:

Yup, three switch panel in the master bedroom.  One for the ceiling fan, one for light, the other one...???  I always assumed it was just an extra and unwired.  I have another right next to me as I type this in the family room.  No idea...

Check and see if the "extra" switch operates one of the electric outlets, and check both outlets in each receptacle.

Done that... nope.

When we moved into our house last August, all of the electrical made sense except for a random switch in the front hall closet.  It didn't control any lights or outlets that I could find.  After about two months, the previous owner came by to pick up some stray mail, so I asked him about it.  It controls the outlets he had installed around the eaves of the house to control Christmas lighting.  Never would have figured that one out.

JoeTR6 said:

When we moved into our house last August, all of the electrical made sense except for a random switch in the front hall closet.  It didn't control any lights or outlets that I could find.  After about two months, the previous owner came by to pick up some stray mail, so I asked him about it.  It controls the outlets he had installed around the eaves of the house to control Christmas lighting.  Never would have figured that one out.

My house has the same thing. The previous owner made it a point to tell me about it. When he moved in he could never figure out what the switch in the closet was for. He said he lived in the house for like 7yrs before he figured it out. 

Yep, this one. 

It's between a window and the fireplace. My guess it's for the fireplace if you put in a set of automatic gas logs. At the moment it does nothing. 

In reply to Toyman01 :

You should dig up a pencil and label it "Magic" and "More Magic"

Yep, we have an old house with a mystery switch in a bedroom closet. There has never been a light in there. I like the "Magic" label idea, might have to do that.

My basement suite has mystery switches in the hallway.

The switch at one end turns the lights on and off. The switch at the other end only turns the lights on or off if the first switch is in the "on" position.

Based on the electrical in the rest of the suite, the goof that wired it had no idea how to wire a three-way switch. 

This is the least of the stupid electrical issues that came with my house. I've fixed most of them now, this is the only one I haven't gotten to because it requires opening walls.