What I meant to add was the fact that it puts a switch in the neutral connection is what makes it against the code.
It puts the light in series with the common points of the switches and connects each traveler to the hot and neutral.
If you erase the red line back to the connection points in the drawing that RMB posted it makes it more clear to see.
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BTW that is exactly what I was talking about, but it is still in left field as the travelers of the switch are never connected together. Which is what the OP claims.
That's easy, when there's 2 somethings (hot and neutral wires to the receptacle).
That depends on how it's wired. I know of one of a 3way circuit that has both hot and neutral on each switch (and that has a receptacle on it too). Ignoring it won't make it go away.
Just got home from work. I haven't checked all the posts but it looks like someone must have posted a diagram before I could. From the way it's wired (single wire coming from each switch to the fixture), I'd guess it originated with knob&tube..
Unfortunately true. I remember in my first house, the medicine cabinet was one of those old chrome-plated jobs with fluorescent lights on the sides, and an outlet at one end. Lights were controlled by the wall switch, but the outlet was hot all the time. Only one cable coming into the medicine cabinet: a
2-wire BX from the switch. They had used the cable armor as the neutral for the lights.
I have one here, the 3way light in my kitchen is wired like that, and there's a receptacle installed in one of the boxes (next to a 3way switch), with both hot and neutral common to both switch and receptacle (which is not affected by the switch).
Having seen the diagram, I offer an alternative verbal description of the logic. To start, there is only one traveller.
There are three conductors. One of them is permanantly hot. One of them is permanantly nuetral. Neither switch affects either of these. The outlet is connected between them.
The CENTER pole of each switch is connected to the third-wire, the lamp, and then the other switch. the (up) pole of each switch is connected to the hot, and the (down) pole of each switch is connected to the nuetral.
So Switch-1 controls whether one side of the lamp is hot or nuetral, and Switch-2 controls whether the other side of the lamp is hot or nuetral.
If both switches are set to "hot", then the lamp is hot, but off. If both are "nuetral" then the lamp is not hot, and off. If the switches disagree one way, then the lamp is hot, and it's polarity is correct, and if they disagree the other way, then the lamp is hot, but the polarity is reversed.
I don't know if I'd call it "stupid", it's actually kind of clever. But if the light fixture(s) in question have exposed shells, or if the person doing the wiring doesn't know what you've done, it's certainly dangerous. (I mean, you can stick your voltage detector across the two leads to the lamp, show zero volts, and still get zapped when you start pulling wires apart. How much fun is that?)
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