I know this has probably been asked a thousand times already, but I want to be sure I am clear on it before I proceed with my wiring. I hope it doesn't open up a can of worms in here. I just finished reading a very long and informative thread from 2002 that discussed multiwire circuits, grounds, neutrals, grounded conductors, etc. While I am still a little foggy about some of it I believe I understand the gist of it. Here goes...I have two 110V lines of different phase coming into my panel, along with a neutral. If I install a multiwire circuit, the hots must be on different phases in order to balance the load on the neutral, since the alternating pahses tend to cancel each other out. (hope I got that right) So this means that if I use one of these mini twin breakers in my panel, the kind that plug in where a regular single breaker would, I should install only one of the hots to one of these breakers, and the other hot would need to be installed on a different breaker which would be connected to one of the lugs from the other phase, or line. Am I missing anything?

I currently have a standard switch and outlet wired together in my dining room. I want to replace the switch with a dimmer. I can't figure out how to complete the circuit. The house has old wiring (one black, one white and one white with black tape around it) as well as new white and black lines. The outlet has black and white lines running out of it, along with 2 screws per side. How do I complete this circuit? I spent hours on it yesterday and either tripped the circuit breaker, had the DR light "always on", or the DR light wouldn't work. The additional problem is some of the living room outlets are wired to this outlet/switch box. As it stands right now, if I turn on the DR light, the outlets in the LR go out! If I leave it off, the LR outlets work and the DR light is on very dim. This can't be good.. Please help!