Good morning (east coast), I continually find stupid things in my circa 1890's home and last week was no exception.
The short question:
I've got a wire I need to leave in the wall that is unpowered/fully disconnected, what's the best/proper way to do this? Pulling it out is not feasible.
Backstory if you're bored:
I found while doing a full gut of my plaster/lath that we had a situation where the light switch was branching out to a chain of 3 always-on outlets and the switched side was going to the ceiling light.
I pulled all the old nasty outlets out (appeared to be 90's or older maybe) and the switch. Got the drywall guy to leaves the wires where they hung, just pull through a couple small holes and deal with the mess later. Later is now.
So reconnecting a set of outlets on the always-hot side of the switch just didn't feel right to me as a DIYer. Instead I ran a fresh wire to a new junction box coming in from the far side of the circuit and now I must do something with the wire between the switch and outlet 1. It will NOT be hot, I've going to disconnect it from the switch and outlet 1 - should I pull from the gang box or cut it close and leave in the box? There's not a feasible way to pull it from the wall, so it needs to stay in the wall, but what's the proper way to do that?
Old Layout:
Hot in>Switch>Ceiling light and Outlet 1>Outlet 2>Outlet 3>Closet light>End
Current layout:
Hot in>Switch>Switch to ceiling light only>End
Closet light>NEW HOT JUNCTION (basically a T)>Outlet 3>Outlet 2>Outlet 1>End
Thanks!
Jason
PS. Maybe I could've left as is, I don't know, but sure didn't seem right to power a bunch of outlets like that.
