We just had our kitchen remodeled and the contractor moved one dimmer switch in a 3-way circuit. Today, when I went to take a look at the moved outlet, I saw a few things that set off some alarms:
- There was no ground wire inside the box and the ground wire had been removed off the switch
- One of the wires looks like it had been fully wrapped in electrical tape instead of having traditional insulation.
Here's the picture of inside the switch box:
What I'm thinking happened here is that the contractors incorrectly used 14/2 wire instead of 14/3 wire for the traveler.
My questions are:
- Did I diagnose this issue correctly (14/2 wire used instead of 14/3)?
- How dangerous is this?
- Is it up to code or any sort of "common practice"?
- What are my options to fix it? Do I need to rewire the switch?
Some additional background:
- We had a fully permitted whole-house rewire in 2015 so all the circuits should be up to code as of that time.
- We are in CA and have not had our final inspection on the kitchen
Edit: Here's a picture of the other switch in the 3-way circuit:
Edit 2: OK, I spent the morning crawling through the attic and trying to figure out exactly what the contractor did. I think they took the 14/3 wire from the non-dimmer switch and fed it into a junction box in our attic. From the junction box they "converted" a 14/2 wire to be a 14/3 and fed it down to the dimmer switch. I created this wiring diagram to summarize it:
Additionally, here is a more detailed picture of the non-dimmer switch:
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