Good Morning.

I have, What I am hoping, is just a stupid oversight on my behalf.

Near my back door I have a 2 gang double switch box.

One switch is connected to my pond/and back door lights circuit.

The other switch is connected to my master bedroom and my outdoor flood lights (There are two sets of three flood lights) one set on each corner of the back of the house.

I was planning on installing a set of smart switches. However, when I opened up the cover I found a mess of epic proportion.

I finally got the pond/outdoor light circuit sorted out and closer to code. However, I am having some trouble identifying the correct way to wire the floodlights and unfortunately the picture I took of the initial wiring somehow is corrupted.

Coming into the box are two cables. One a double wire (Black White ground) one a triple wire (Red Black white ground). As far as I can tell the only wire that is hot is the red wire and far as I am aware there is no second switch in this circuit. Any thoughts on how this should be wired up would be appreciated.

I can post a picture if there is any interest but I am not sure if it would show anything useful at this point

Regards,
Adam

**Edited**

 

Not electrician so just a couple of questions to help clarify. 1 are the pool, pond lights powered off the same circuit in box? Are the flood lights on the single black, white cable or on the red, white black cable? A picture would help.

 

That is one of the challenges I do not know how the wires are physically run and the switch they used originally has no defining characteristics on it. Picture below. The green arrows belong to the 14/3 and the blue to the 14/2
<img src="https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/756x1008/img_2496_50c3e4fa332c1f77b16051054889db4239f6a51a.jpg" width="756" height="1008"/>

 

Hi, your going to have to post some pics, exactly what wires are in the box, DO NOT break any splices, sounds like you have a 2 wire cable and a 3 wire cable, what do you mean about bringing it closer to code?
can’t imagine an epic mess with only 2 cables
Geo

 

Thank you for the response. I poorly articulated the issue. The switch I am working on now was not the mess I just do not know how I should hook it up.

The one next to it was the main issue. Every wire going into the original switch on the right was the same color, they would loop off of one of the terminals and then back on themselves and there was a bridge from the right to the left switch as well. Epic was probably a bit of an over statement my son decided he really hates sleep and I was a bit punch drunk when I posted this this morning. but it was a mess.

 

Hi, it appears that the whites get spliced together, the blacks get spliced together with a pigtail to one terminal on the switch, red wire to other switch terminal, if you have a meter test blacks to ground to be sure one is hot.
The red conductor should go to the load or floods
Geo

 

That is concerning.
I don't see any bridge now and if there were a bridge then both those of those switches are on the same circuit.