Need some electrical advice.

[tmbrown97]

The OP's post was hard to follow, but after a re-read, what I got out of it was that he was able to use the switch to re-feed the outlet and lights using a new 3-wire setup from the switch - where the outlets are constant on, and the lights are on a switch - all on the same 15A breaker; his shop outlets are still on the old 20A breaker for his power tools.

 

[Frunple]

Didn't you say you had a 12/3 going out to the yard that fed the lights on one hot and the outlets on the other hot?

Depends on what you mean by a "hot". The outlets were fed from the black, the lights from the red, but they were both fed from the same "hot" from a 20A breaker, just that the lights were obviously switched.

If so, I don't understand how you are using a 15amp breaker for the lights and a 20amp breaker for the outlets. That would be 2 different breakers on the two hots in the 12/3 that aren't tie together.

I'm not. That's what I was trying to avoid doing. So Thadsaab suggested re-feeding both the outside outlets and lights from the 15A breaker at my front door that is (was) currently powering some lighting. this is what I did after finding that the hot feeding those outlets was easily accessible and a 15' run of 14/3 sent a constant hot and a switched hot over to the outdoor stuff from that 15A feed.
So now I don't have a 15A and 20A on the same 12/3. Which is what I wanted to avoid doing in the first place.

 

[apostolakisl]

So, a new wire was pulled. That was the point I was trying to make. . . there was no way to do this (by code) without putting a new wire in somewhere. Without actually visiting the location and seeing the physical characteristics of everything, it's just pretty much impossible to say where the new wire would most easily go.

I'm glad you have it working.

Just curious, are you feeding the 15amp breaker into the 12g at the panel? If so, you will be having the same issue as another post yesterday where the "big" wire was spliced to a "small" wire in the breaker box before it went to the breaker as a "message" to any future electrician that down the line there was smaller wire in the system. Just so they wouldn't replace the breaker with a bigger one thinking that it was "big" wire all the way out.