Need either a diagram or pictures of the wiring. Also, we need to know which wire is the power source. Doing this alone may help you figure out what is wrong. Unhook black and applicable whites (whites nutted together wont be your power) and leave all wires exposed and NOT touching each other or anything else. Turn on the circuit breaker and find the hot wire with a quality non contact tester. Then turn the power back off and mark the hot wire with some colored tape.

Note: Don't use a cheap tester, they often give false positives or go bad after a few uses. They also are too sensitive, sensing power in the general area, not allowing you to differentiate between wires.

Hello Vith and thank you for the reply. Yes I am using a Klein non-contact voltage tester so I think I am doing it correctly. As stated above, with all the wires disconnected, there is one white wire going to the light that is energized. The rest are not.

I will post a diagram tomorrow morning.

Michael

Knowing what each term is and it's proper use is the key to installing or troubleshooting electrical issues. Line (source of the voltage), load aka switch leg (device being operated), neutral (white wire) should never be used in switching and should never have hot power coming from it and or be used as a switch leg, ground (is the designed path to earth). Electrical power will always take the least resistance to ground if proper grounding rod or rods are installed. Without being onsite to help diagnose your electrical issue aka honey do list it is a guessing game? I can tell you that none of this sounds correct and should be looked at by quality craftsman who knows what a tone generator is along with ohm and other needed meters and testers. If it were me I would want to know where each of these wires were coming from and going to. This is where the tone generator will give the exact wire path behind concealed walls, floors and ceilings. www.dbelectric.us

The reason the white is hot is it is more than likely a traveler for a 3 way switch. Considering there are stairs involved this makes sense, it also makes it more complicated. It is code (and good common sense) to have a light switch at the top and bottom of the stairs. However, we must be missing some info, normally with everything unhooked (both switches) you would find the hot black. Power source is most likely at the other switch you aren't looking at.

In any case it sounds like what we are looking at is a 3 way circuit and an outlet. If the outlet is included in the 3 way circuit, it will not have power all the time, depending on how the switches are toggled. You would have to run a separate line from the power source to the outlet to have constant power there.

I thought I replied to this post earlier today, but I guess it did not go through.

The wiring for the receptacle and the light beyond it sound similar to what I have run across a couple of times in my house. If the power is running to the light switch, then they may have run 14/3 from the switch to the 1st outlet and used the white/black pair to power the receptacle, and the white/red pair passes through the receptacle to provide power to the light that is beyond. The only odd part is that usually you only need 14/2 from the receptacle to the light to make this work, but you said they had two reds nutted together in the box.

You can use a similar scheme in reverse if you have power at the light, then 14/3 from the light to the receptacle, and then 14/2 running to the switch. The red wire is just used as a traveler that passes through the receptacle to provide a switch loop from the light switch to the light.

I was very confused the first time I found this type of wiring scheme, since it looked like I was working with a 3 way switch circuit. However, it seemed that it was just a way to save running one more 12/2 cable from the light switch to the light.

Bruce.

Here is the diagram - been busy at work. Pretty simple just four wires coming in and out from two directions.

@bcarlson

"You can use a similar scheme in reverse if you have power at the light, then 14/3 from the light to the receptacle, and then 14/2 running to the switch. The red wire is just used as a traveler that passes through the receptacle to provide a switch loop from the light switch to the light."

Can you tell me how to wire it up? I'm not sure from your comments.

Thanks,

Michael

The fact you think this is simple means you should hire out. Sorry :\ Not standard wiring scenario and the best outcome would be to call someone out and be done with it. Passing some info we have given may make the job quicker.

Note: What your diagram shows is only one piece of the circuit, not much we can do with that. Need info from the light fixture and other switch.

Example of said complexity

The above diagram wont work for your scenario, just an example. The incoming power is either at the other switch or the light fixture.