Illegal Light Switches? These are banned in California (Energy Efficiency Code)

Omg. Lets make the laws so severe that only the wealthy can own a home here in California.

Trick question. Everything is illegal in California.

Good information. It’s crazy how things are changing so fast! Check out my channel about building a House in California.

One note -- it's illegal for a contractor to put that regular old on/off switch in your house. But if your homebuilder was insane like mine (he put the required occupancy sensor switch in the main bathroom, but pointed out into the hallway so it was useless!), it's perfectly fine for you yourself as the homeowner to put a regular on/off switch in place of the useless occupancy sensor switch.

BTW, with overhead LED lighting now using a whole 8 watts of power, the whole point of these expensive switches is basically nonsense. My whole house, if I turn on every single light in the house at full intensity, is consuming a whole 80 watts of power. Yay.

Occupancy sensors can be annoying if they can't be overridden. Sometimes you don't want the lights on.

about to build in so cal so am planning for this. Dimmers and particularly occupancy switches are all very expensive - and since we're required to have led lights, overkill. I have a smart home controller (hubitat), is it ok to put in smart motion sensors (+ smart switch) in bathrooms etc? Would prefer to put in smart switches and dimmers and have on hand a number of zigbee indoor motion sensors and have done this for automatic outside lights with Hue outdoor sensors. The smart motion switches are insanely expensiver and not sure I've even seen a zigbee/zwave version. Dare say this depends on the inspector.

Not all light bulbs fixture are dimmable

There are instances (like going to the bathroom in the middle of the night) when I don't want the lights on, so now I have to have the lights on so then I have to wait till my eyes adjust or risk running into something. What about if I get up in the middle of the night I trip the sensor in the bedroom, turn on the lights and wake my wife up? For commercial fine do this crap, but geezus do they really think that leaving the lights on in homes is such a widespread issue within the State? Once a home is finialled how many people are removing these stupid things and replacing them with standard switches? What's next, is the CEC going to send out goons annually to inspect your house for light switches?

I wonder if that's a regulation that actually saves energy. How often do people keep their lights in a dimmed state? The 24/7 phantom load of smart or motion-sensing switches, aggregated across all the millions of switches in California, has to be pretty significant.

Stupid California regs that do absolutely nothing.

When did this law come into effect?