Bench testing lighting

RandyKnight

Active Member
Here's a dumb question. If I want to put a load bearing Insteon (or UPB) switch in one of the SA pedestals, how do I wire it? It just has the 2 wires from a dual prong plug. Is one neutral and one hot? What about ground? Ground it separately? For this, I just want to be able to hook up a switch for programming, etc.

The second part of the question is how do I add a load to it. The idea would be to mount a bare bulb on the bench that I could tie the switch above to. Would that just be a single wire from the bulb to the switch and then a hot to the bulb as well?

Thanks. As you can tell, my background is high tech geek stuff, not household electrical. ;)
 
Randy,

"As is" the pedestal switch is designed to simply put UPB signals on the wiring. The ground is not used, the load is capped and only hot and neutral are connected. Neutral is on the 'ribbed' side of the cable.

It may be easiest to keep it that way and just connect the light to an lamp module, but if you want direct control then the light hot side needs to connect to the load wire in the pedestal. You will have to take out the existing line cord and use a 3 wire. The best thing would then be to make all the connections in an external box. That may not all meet code either. So if you are not comfortable with that wiring or possible safety repercussions, the easiest thing is to leave the pedestal as is and use a lamp module for the light.
 
Randy,
For bench testing and not for real world, I would drill a small hole in the bottom or side of the case that the brown/load wire from the switch could pass through. That wire and a neutral is all you would need to power a lamp.
If it were me, I would just get another switch and build up what you want on the bench, or use the switch mounted in the case but leave it apart to expose the brown wire. The brown wire will be HOT when the load is activated!
Dave
 
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