Okay. I changed out a light switch that controlled the light above my kitchen table and the light outside of the nearest door on our deck. I carefully matched the top right on the new with the top right on the old, etc. I turn on the bottom switch and BOTH lights come on. Ditto for the bottom switch. In both cases, this the only switch that controls those lights. What did I do wrong?
On one side of the double switch both screws are intrinsically connected to each other and serve to accept the incoming hot or power line. On the other side of the switch the two screws are not intrinsically connected to each other and serve to send power to and control two different individual locations. You have the two sides of the switch reversed.
*On a combination device with two single pole switches, one side is common and the other side is separate. If you look closely at the screw terminals you should see a little jumper between the two screws on the common side. That is the side for your hot wire. The two switch legs go on the screws on the other side.
But I have two screw terminals on both sides. There was no jumper that I saw.
It's there, and on some switches it's a darker color than the load side terminals. In any event, You've got it backwards. Put the single (hot) wire on the opposite side from where it is now, and the two load wires on the other side.
I'll try it. Why would this one be wired up so differently from the one I removed? When I took the old one out, I did so only one wire at a time, made sure I could see the "on" designation on both of them so I had both old and new facing "up". I wired it back exactly as it was wired originally.
Maybe made by a different manufacturer.
because different brands are different. Especially so on three-way switches. the common screw is not always in the same place. You may have just turned the new one upside down that's all.
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