Switches that are wired to outlets

My home was built in the '70s and as was common practice at time time, I have several dumb switches that are wired to outlets. Up to this point, I’ve been under the impression that replacing these switches with smart switches was a bad idea because someone might plug a high-load device into the outlet. (electric vacuum).

Is it safe to replace switches that control outlets with the Blue Fan Switch? I can’t rely on the other members of my family to not plug the wrong types of devices into an outlet. So my solution needs to work for anything that might be plugged in (lamp, fan, vacuum), otherwise I need to stick with the dumb switch. I have a few dumb switches that I’d like to replace so that they all match, but only if its safe to do so. I don’t even need the smarts, this is a cosmetic replacement.

Any thoughts or advice?

No. It’s not safe, nor is the fan switch rated for that use. Additionally, for safety reasons, the NEC prohibits the use of a switch that cannot carry a load equal to the capacity of the breaker, and neither the dimmer nor the fan switch can do that.

You need the soon-to-be-available On/Off switch. That is a relay-based switch capable of carrying the loads a receptacle will encounter.

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This is exactly the type of detailed answer I was hoping for. Thank you very much. I guess I’ll wait for the “soon-to-be-available On/Off switch”.

If you don’t need the switches to do anything, you can just wire the outlets to be always on, and then use the switches as scene controllers. We’ll need some pictures of the wiring at the outlet and the switch box to describe how to do it. But basically, you’d want nothing connected to load on the switch, and line/neutral connected to the switch and outlets.

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Since there doesn’t seem to be a new on/off for Z-Wave, could I use one of the old Black series ones (LZW-30) for this scenario?

If you look at the specs, the they’re fairly low. However, the maximum load isn’t published, so it’s hard to say.

Here’s the -SN variant: