I have a combination switch. 1 switch works a porch light and the other switch works yard lights. I have it wired as 1 common and the 2 leads out to lights. Im maintaining 120V across switch to porch light. But only 56V across to yard lights. I tried to direct wire the yard lights and it still only recieved 56V. My question is are the yard lights grounding out somewhere?
It sounds more like a bad connection somewhere. Corrosion does odd things. What happens if you swap the leads from the switch to the lights?
And the yard lights are lit up, but dim? How are you measuring this 56V? At the light between hot and neutral? Or at the switch? How about hot and ground? With the lights lit or no load?
This reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine back in the 80's when he bought a foreclosure that was in bad shape. The previous homeowner had done some creative wiring and had managed to wire two light fixtures in series, rather than in parallel. The incandescent lights worked, sort of, but were quite dim. This 56-volt business sounds like it's about half of the normal line voltage, as if two fixtures are wired in series.
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