I have been installing smart switches in various locations.
I have a couple cases where there is no neutral and so gave up on those for now.
In one case, there is a neutral wire passing through the switch box - so it does not have a wire nut connection.
I wanted to confirm that I can cut / strip and then attach the white wire from the smart switch. And in addition, there is not a lot of give in the wire, and so it will be a tight squeeze to strip the end of each side and then attach the third wire - any issue with this?
Well that will be a big bummer! It's a 3 way and so I can try the other switch location. The only problem there is that there is another smart switch in that location already so there will not be a lot of room.in the box.
With a three way switch there are three wires used between switches. Typically red, white and black. Although the wire is white... it is not a neutral. It is a traveler (switched hot) wire.
It's always a big help to see picture of the wiring at the switch boxes. How-to-insert-pictures.
With a 3 way switch, you may be able to omit white traveler wire and repurpose it as neutral. Then install a slave smart switch at the remote location.
You will have to figure out how exactly switches are wired.
If it is passing through I will guess that you have a conduit system. There could be enough slack to pull some back from both ends. Or you could pull a new white wire in one direction and cut the other long enough to use.
I actually had wired the other switch - also 3 way - and there is a neutral plus the 2 travelers.
joed - I might try that as the bathroom switch is right behind this switch and I think a neutral is going there - I will check and see if I can finagle something there!
There is a neutral, two travelers(orange) and a common(red).
Always three wires on a standard 3w switch.
With conduit you are lucky as you can add in anything needed.
Thank you! [sorry for the delay - been distracted with the holidays]
So basically take a foot of white wire and feed it through the box to the bathroom switch box and if that has a wire nut with the neutrals connected, connect the foot into that box?
I am installing a new ceiling fan in my office.
Originally there was a chandelier on a dimmer switch, which I planned to replace with a regular switch.
But once I removed the dimmer switch I found that there are 3 sets of wires inside my outlet box, behind the dimmer.
I'm totally guessing here, but it looks like the outlets that are 2ft directly below the dimmer switch are wired through this box.
Meaning that this chandelier isn't on the "lights" breaker, and instead share a breaker with the outlets below.
(I didn't check to make sure the lights breaker turned off the chandelier before removing the chandelier, also I don't have a DMM... I know, I suck)
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If I kill the correct breaker, am I ok to remove the dimmer switch and replace with a regular light switch?
I am still guessing here, but I think the wire coming into the box from the top left goes to the ceiling light, the top right is the 110v coming from the breaker, and the wires at the bottom of the box go directly to the outlets below.
I'm starting to feel like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation and could use some help...
The short story is that I just installed a Kasa HS220 smart dimmer. For a while, it looked like it wouldn't dim, but it would turn on and off. However, if the TV — which is on a separate circuit — is turned on, the lights seem to dim, and there is intense flickering at every dimmer level but 100%.
The longer story — I have a basement room with two fluorescent light fixtures (4 tubes each). There are two 3-way switches on either side of the room. I replaced the 4 tubes in each fixture with 2 Toggled dimmable LED tubes. These wire direct to the AC line. That worked great, as expected. Next, I eliminated one of the 3-way switches (I know that the HS220 is *not* compatible with 3-way). 120V was now going direct to the other switch, now effectively a single-pole switch. After this, I hooked up the HS220 to replace the other switch. This switch is in a two-gang box, and the other switch in the box is on a different circuit (let's call it Circuit B). I had been certain that I was getting line/load/neutral for the HS220 all from the original Circuit A.
I ran through the full setup on the Kasa app. Adjusted dimming values. However, the switch wouldn't dim the lights. To test, I swapped the HS220 with a Lutron Skylark dimmer I have in another room which also uses Toggled tubes and already works great. With both devices swapped and wired up, they both worked great, completely as expected. I swapped back to the desired configuration being sure to use the exact same wiring.
However, I went to watch TV. The TV is on Circuit B. As soon as it is turned on, the lights connected to the HS220 (which is on Circuit A) flickered briefly. Huh. I tried dimming, and sure enough they actually dimmed. Except anything below 100% resulted in some pretty intense flickering from the lights. When I turned off the TV, the lights went back to full power. I'll also add that I can take the dimmer down to 1% and the lights are still at full power. There are several other AV/ethernet and lighting appliances plugged into Circuit B, but only the TV affects the lights. Everything on Circuit B works as I would expect it to.
I've attached the wiring diagram for this circuit.
I tried disconnecting sections to see if that ruled anything out. When I have the second light bank removed from the circuit (dashed brown line), light bank 1 acts as expected — it turns off and on and dims. There is no interference from the TV being on.
I don't know what voodoo is going on in my basement or where wires are crossed (possibly literally!). Does anyone here have advice for how to proceed? Thanks!
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12-22-20, 03:08 PM
