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My current situation is power comes into light switch and then to receptacle controlled by light switch. I need to add a hot receptacle. I assume I can pig tail the incoming power wires inside the light switch box and have one set lead to the light switch and the other to lead to the new hot receptacle. Is this correct thinking?

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  • Can you post photos of the insides of the boxes involved? Do you still need a switched receptacle at that location?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Aug 7, 2019 at 23:17
  • Yes, we need to leave the current switch and receptacle. We want to add a new hot receptacle below the switch, so obviously it would be easiest to run power from there versus fishing and cutting drywall.
    – junta
    Aug 8, 2019 at 16:37

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Given that the line cable (hot and neutral) enters the switch box, you can run a new cable from the light switch box to a new receptacle and connect it so the switch will still switch the existing receptacle.

You cannot run a new cable from the existing switched receptacle to get an always on receptacle.

If you wanted to do away with the switched receptacle, you could remove the switch from the circuit and connect the wires with a wire nut. The existing receptacle would then be always on.

You could install a ceiling box and light fixture and run a cable from the switch box to the light fixture. That way the switch would control the ceiling light.

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Yes, you are right.

Split off of the incoming power with a pigtail going to the existing switch and a new wire feeding down to the new receptacle.

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