My basement has one room running the entire length of the house. There is one light controlled by a switch upstairs and 2 additional 'wing lights', each with 2 light bulbs in, controlled by two switches at the bottom of the stairs. The home was wired by an idiot in the late 50s or early 60s, hence no grounding. There have been problems with one or the other wing lights being left on, sometimes all night long. My solution to this was simple - wire an outlet at the bottom of the stairs that would be visible from the top and plug in an LED nightlight to each plug, breaking out the separator tab to make each plug independent. When a wing light is turned on, the night light goes on and is a reminder to turn it off. We can also see the night lights plainly from upstairs at a glance. One side went swimmingly. I discovered that instead of the power going to the switch first and then out to the light, it went to the light and then back to the switch. (This is backwards from how I've seen other lights wired & how I was taught to wire a switched light.) The two blacks are wired together in the light fixture and the white returning from the switch is the switched 'hot'. I pig-tailed the switched hot to one plug on the outlet. Because there was no return available, I ran a romex from a nearby outlet to the new outlet, only using the white wire to provide a path back to the breaker box. Everything tested perfectly and it works exactly as intended. The left side went similarly, though I found when I was testing that when the switch was off, there was 7 or 8 volts AC between the switched hot & the return. Figuring it was just a bad switch, I replaced it and finished up. Last night, I saw a dim glow from the left night light... what the?!??? Testing revealed this same 7 to 8 volt AC between the return & the switched hot when the switch is off. Disconnecting the wire from the switch revealed that the problem is not with the switch - the low voltage is there even with the switched hot disconnected from the switch, so it must be somehow feeding back from the light fixture itself! Further testing showed that the voltage ONLY exists when an LED bulb is in one or both of the light sockets! Having an incandescent bulb in eliminates the problem; have to assume that the bulb is using the power and the filament in the bulb is just not getting hot enough to generate detectable light/heat. (This theory would explain why bulbs in this particular fixture have always burnt out faster than any others when incandescents were in use.) I replaced all the wiring in the light fixture - the guy who wired it used lamp cord & those crush-style barrel connectors like you'd use in a car/boat! - with 14 gauge solid wire pulled from a romex. Same problem. Then I eliminated the light fixture itself by wiring an outlet to the switched hot where it comes into the light fixture and the return from the light fixture. Everything is fine - 0 volts when the switch is off - but when I connect a desk lamp to it and turn it on, essentially relying on the wall switch to turn the light on/off, the same 7 to 8 volt AC returns when the switch is in the off position and light is off. Thinking it might be from an appliance somehow, I unplugged everything else on the circuit, but the 7 - 8 volt AC remains. Frankly, I am at a loss as to what is causing this or even how to proceed. I'd rather not have to re-wire the light fixture as it's above a ceiling that would have to be cut out, but don't even have any theories as to what might be causing it. I've never run into a situation where there's partial voltage present before - usually, there's either 110 or there is 0. I'm fairly certain that this problem has existed for years and I just now discovered it because of the night light, but would like to correct it if possible. Any help/advice/ideas would be appreciated.

I have a 10-4 wire that runs directly from a double 30A breaker in the main panel that runs to a room I use a lot of electrical equipment in (ham radio stuff). Currently I have it running in to a double duplex box, one 120 circuit on one duplex (black) and the other 120 circuit on the other duplex (red) and am using the white as a common for both. I know it's possible, but what is the electrical code (I know it sort of varies by county) as far as first making the 10-4 into a 240 outlet with the appropriate socket and then breaking that out into another box as a double 120 outlet like I currently have. I know a fellow that has a 240 outlet, and what he does is put a 240 extension in the socket and run it into extension boxes that have it broken out into 120 circuits. I'm just looking for the best way to do this, I would like to have a 240 outlet in this room also for one piece of equipment.