Hi,

I was wondering if someone could help. The other day my Lutron Electronics 600 Watt Ivory Watt Skylark® Slide-to-Off Dimmer
Model: #S-600PH-IV was not working. On the bottom of this dimmer is a little switch that turns the light on and off. This dimmer switch controls one of my outlets. So that when I plug my lamp into the outlet I could turn it on and off from the switch.

Anyway the switch stopped working the other day, so I went to Home depot and bought the same exact one. My house has I guess what you call central ground because only two positives were connected to the switch. When I put the new switch on...still nothing worked. I though it might be the actual wiring, but when I touch the two positives together the outlet works. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thanks

 

If when you touch the two wires together the receptacle works, then the wiring must be correct. So the problem must be the switch or the connections you made to it. It would seem unusual but not impossible to get two bad switches in a row. You might try connecting a regular (not a dimmer) switch and see if that works. Make sure you have a 2-way and not a 3-way dimmer, and make sure you are connecting and using it per directions, with tight wirenut or screw connections.

 

I thought that the use of a dimmer to control an outlet is not permitted.

 

Technically it's not, but that's another issue.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I will try another switch without the dimmer control. I'll let you know the outcome. I just cant see why the original switch worked for years till it broke and I bought the same one and it doesnt.

 

What kind of light is plugged into the outlet? Did you change what was plugged into the outlet around the time the original dimmer stopped working? Running anything other than an incandescent light through this dimmer could cause major problems.

 

Nope, this the same incandescent 100 watt bulb I've been using for al least a year.