Is this wire necessary?

[bmellis]

I'm doing a little rewiring in my living room. Actually, I'm combining two switches that were in two seperate junction boxes, one above the other, into one double switch junction box. There is a power switch for the fan and a dimmer switch for two wall sconces. The way it was wired before, there were two Romex cables going into each junction box and one Romex cable connecting the the switches in the two boxes, for a total of 3 Romex cables going into each box. I'm assuming that the two main cables in each box are one for the power from the breaker and one that takes power through the switch to the fan/lights. The cable connecting the two switches, on the other hand, has no apparent purpose. It just seems to connect to the ground wires, the hot wires, and the "return" wires of the breaker cables. Is this connecting cable redundant and can it safetly be removed? What am I missing here?

Thanks a lot for you help,
Ben

[John Nelson]

Chances are that in one box you have (1) the power feed, (2) switched power to the fixture being controlled, and (3) power feeding on to the other box.

In the other box, you have (1) power coming in from the first box, (2) switched power to the fixture being controlled, and (3) power feeding something else not yet determined.

It is unlikely that unless these two switches are on separate circuits that you have independent power feeds to both boxes. If you remove any of these cables, chances are you'll lose power to something else in your house.

[bmellis]

John,

Thanks for your reply. So is it normal for all switches and outlets on the same circuit to be wired in series? If the third cable does in fact run power from the first box to the second, what is the best way to wire that when combining the two switches into one box? Should I wrap the wire around the back of the box with one end coming through the top of the box and the other end coming through the bottom of the box?

In order to make sure that the third cable is necessary, would it be safe to remove it and turn on the power to see if something no longer has power?

Thanks,
Ben

[joed]

No don't do that. Just take the wire the outgoing cable is connected to and connect it to the wire the incoming(other end) of the cable is connected to.

[bmellis]

I don't know why I didn't think of that, that will make things a lot less crowded.

Thanks a lot,
Ben