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Switching out lighting and outlets in our 1981 home from wonderful khaki to something more modern. I've done 3-way and 4-way switches, outlets, GFCI, etc. all over the house, but the bathrooms have run me into a small issue. I've just encountered what I now now to be Despard switches for the light/heat/fan in the guest bathroom. Each switch has a pair of black wires coming in; the left-hand side trio that is all pig-tailed into one original wire is hot, and the three right-hand side ones are not hot. How would I go about switching this over to the more standard 3-rocker switch seen below? Everyone is 15 Amp. Switch still attached

Right-hand side plugs, not hot, all originating within box

left-hand trio pig-tailed from one hot coming from box removed switch with 6 wires new switch, with one black screw and ground screw on opposing side

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    Can you show the other side of the new switch? Is it a single input(one screw) or three separate inputs(three screws)?
    – crip659
    Mar 15 at 22:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This is actually really easy. The typical triple Decora rocker switch, such as this Leviton from Home Depot:

Leviton triple switch

has one common input and three switched outputs. You actually get rid of the 3 pigtails and connect the hot wire to the common screw and the three switched hots to the three screws on the other side.

If you had three separate circuits, instead of three devices on one circuit, then this would be a real problem. You've got it easy.

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