>Brings to mind an episode of Married With Children where the
>cast found a light switch under the kitchen counter whose purpose was
>unknown, leading to the typical "comedy of errors" plot only for it to
>be revealed (to the audience) in the final seconds of the episode that
>it controlled a light socket in the doghouse of all places.

Oh, the Mystery Switch! I have *three* of those in my current house. Well, two, now (I figured out what one of them does).

So in the (finished) basement there's a bathroom, and it has a two-switch panel on the wall next to the door... remarkably high up, at about shoulder height on me and I'm 6'2". One of those switches controls the lights, as one would expect. The other... appears to do nothing. The bathroom *does* have a fan, but that's controlled by another switch on the wall over the toilet. So that's Mystery Switch #1.

Mystery Switch #2 is free-standing, just resting on the stud inside the wall cavity where the breaker box(es, don't ask) lives. It is wired to *something* but durned if I can figure out what by simple visual inspection. I thought at first it might be for the lawn irrigation system, which was decommissioned sometime in the 90's, as I understand it, but they left all the bits in situ -- but there's *another* switch, a timer switch, that controls those bits and I can trace the wires from that out through to the irrigation control header and they don't share a path that I can see with the Mystery Switch.

And finally, Mystery Switch #3 is in the crawlspace under the living room (our house is a split-level of sorts) and I finally figured out what it does, two years after moving in. It controls power to an outside outlet. That's it. Why anyone felt the need to make it a switched outlet in the first place I'm not sure, and if it was for convenience' sake (to control an outside light, for example) then you'd think it'd be better served somewhere that doesn't require you to literally crawl under the floor to reach.

Our house was built by a self-employed general contractor sometime in the 60s, and going by the work quality I've seen I can only pray that his actual clients got the effort put in because his own stuff is... frightening.

Like, "no, that's illegal" frightening. (The hot tub power line is in conduit affixed to the *fence*, running at about head-height the entire way, and the MIL house out back had roofing panels placed so that the seams were between the joists -- as just two examples).

Oh, there's also the Mystery Extension Cord out back. It's buried, with the plug end poking up out of the ground near the corner of the house. We're not at all sure what it's supposed to do since there's no outlet anywhere near there.

For oddities, though, I guess this is still better than my former house. A couple years after moving in I finally noticed that there was a basement window without a corresponding window on the inside, and went investigating. Turns out that mystery window led to an alcove in the basement (right under the breakfast nook) that had been walled off. In the alcove I found a cardboard box of books, a small (kid-sized) chair, and assorted random bits of clutter, and a single light bulb wired into circuit with no switch. The bulb had burned out.

I don't even know, man.

--sofaspud
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