Installing 3way zWave: How to determine wiring?

[WayneW]

The black hooks up to the load and the white to the neutral. The blue goes to the light.

I think you have a typo here as the load IS the light. Should black go to HOT (aka line)?

 

[Squintz]

Squintz

I was under the impression that the Monster switches are used together. As in you would buy two of their switches and hook them up like a standard 3-way install. That was the advantage to the HomePro switches($56.95+$12.95) as they use the slave and are a lot cheaper than having to buy 2 monsters($129.95+$129.95). I thought I read this in post from rjh.

No thats not true. I spoke with a representative of the monster switches and he told me that in theory the AS101 should work with the monster switches but it had not been tested yet. Their version of the 3-way companion switch is not available yet but should be very soon.

I have an e-mail in with that rep. Hopefully we can figure out why they do not work together.

 

[68sting]

Cool! As you can see from my posts I'm not electrician or a z-wave expert. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

[George West]

And I hate to show ignorance yet again...

I have to admit, I haven't yet learned what neutral and ground really do to the circuit, and hence what their impact would be on measuring voltages on a circuit.

I pulled the outlet off one of the switches, and all the dang wiring is black (or so it seems), so that's no help.

Hi IVB,

It's hard to blame ignorance if all the wires are black... It sounds like the guy who rewired my house also consulted on yours.

Except for obvious cases like single pole switches, I don't try and decipher what went on before, I just pull the old stuff out and rewire the circuit like I want it. In my house I have good access to the wiring from either the attic or the basement and don't need to open the walls to pull the wire.

One of the ones I'm procrastinating on is what looks like a three way switch that is the only switch controlling the circuit. I'm hoping that if I ignore it a kitchen remodel will solve the problem although I am sort of curious about what is on the other end.

I'm not an electrician, just an engineer that had to learn the stuff in self defense so please take this with a grain of salt.

If you use the water pressure/flow analogy to electricity voltage/current the neutral is your tub drain and the ground is the overflow. They both get tied together someplace else. For the case of electricity the neutral provides a return path for the current in the circuit and is tied to ground at the electrical panel. Depending on the state of the circuit the neutral is only sometimes at ground potential which is a lesson I learned the hard way one time.

HTH

George West
www.wtrs.net

 

[IVB]

You can not simply measure the voltage across the hot wires. It needs to be measured to neutral or ground. So yo neet to set your meter to AC voltage and put 1 lead on the neutral (which should always be white) and hot (primary should always be black). For 3 way there is usually a red traveller wire that goes between the switches. 3 ways can be configures in lots of different ways. Most of the time a regular switch works by just switching the hot leg, so you will have the hot (black) wire split with the switch wired in-line. An outlet needs to provide juice, so 1 side is hot and the other side is neutral. If you measure across those wires you should read 120. Normally the hot side is black wire and the neutral white.  Sometimes electricians do funky things like use white whire as hot, but they are supposed to mark it with black tape or something to indicate hot. Normal wire color coding is something like:

Black = Hot
White = Neutral
Green = Ground
Bare = Ground
Red = alternate hot / traveller, etc

So for the 3 way, you really need to find which switch has the load wire, where the power comes in, etc. Most of the time you get lucky and 1 switch has the power feed and load and the second switch is mere a slave, but anything is possible.

well, i just pulled the plate off the other switch, had a little luck. I have a green, white, and 2 black wires. I measured voltage across each black and the green, only one is hot. I'm guessing that means the non-hot one is a traveller.

HOwever, looking at the ACT wiring diagram, they want me to run:
Q1)
- Green->Ground (got that)
- Yellow->Slave (traveller, right?)
- Blue->Load (this is hot, right?)
- Black->Line (huh?)
- White->Neutral (got that, but they show blue&white both going to load. )

Q2) In addition to those questions, I have 4 wires on my switch and they show 5 colors. What do I run their black to?

Also, depressingly the other switch is the one with the 3 black wires.
Q3) Do I need to replace this if it's a "never-ever-used" switch? We have our dresser blocking it.
Q4) I used a multimeter to test connectivity across both switces. Both my non-hot black wire and my white neutral read 0 ohms when tested against 2 of my slave black's.

I can take pics if that'd make it any clearer. Thanks for any help.

 

[Micah]

I'm pretty sure the Blue (load) wire should go to the fixture and the Black (line) goes to hot.

Otherwise, you've got it.

 

[Steve]

Q3) Do I need to replace this if it's a "never-ever-used" switch? We have our dresser blocking it.

Not certain about Zwave (but I would guess its the same), you can not have a 3 way circuit with 1 automated switch and 1 regular. You can do what I did in that situation and basically rewire the side you don't use to take the switch out of it and just use the 1 automated switch.

Line in is always black, neutral is always white and ground is always green, that should cover the basics. What you need to find out is which wire goes to load and if that is in the same switch box as the line you're set. If the line and load are in different boxes, you can use a traveller to route the load wire to the same box as long as you are only using the 1 switch.

If you have a neutral in the box its usually best to measure hot across it instead of ground. I only measure to ground when its the only option.

 

[68sting]

Squintz

Any update on the Monster switches using the Home Pro slaves?

 

[Squintz]

No update as of now. I will send out another e-mail.

 

[IVB]

Well, i'm busting out to do this again, now that all my other stuff is setup. I'm still baffled by the wiring, though.

Anyone have any experience with these circuit tracer thingeys? I see them priced anywhere from $70->$700. I'm wondering whether, between determining which wire is going where, and the loads, i can figure out how the hell my stuff is wired and what I should do.

 

[rosenqui]

Anyone have any experience with these circuit tracer thingeys?

I've got this tone/probe kit: 701K. It's been indispensable on a number of occasions, but I've never tried using it with AC wiring. I use it for low voltage stuff like Cat3/5 and coax. If you have a low voltage run inside a wall you can put the tone on it and then trace where it runs using the probe. Note that if the run is too close to a live AC line you can lose the tone signal, and other noisy low voltage wiring can render the probe less effective as well.

On shielded coax lines you don't get much benefit other than testing at the opposite end to figure out which of several unlabelled runs is the right one - the coax shielding does a good enough job that the tone signal doesn't leak out enough for the probe to pick up.

Still, it's great for figuring out where the other end of a wire terminates or to get a rough idea of the path a wire follows inside a wall.

 

[IVB]

Actually, I don't need the path, and I would kill the power. I just need to know which wire runs from one switch to the other switch or to the load itself. That "which of several unlabelled runs" is my angst right now.

Sounds like you think the basic ones would work fine for that? BTW, how do they physically work? Attach one of those clips to the wire at one end, a light or other doohickey at the other end, if you see it light up then that's the wire?

 

[rfdesq]

BTW, how do they physically work?

Attach one or two wires from the signal generator to the wire you want to test. Run the receiver, a probe with a built in speaker, up the wall and you should be able to hear which way the wire runs. When you get to the end and have a bunch of wires, it is generally the same color wire with the loudest tone. Due to RF generation between wires,YMMV. Sometimes only hooking up one wire from the generator works best.

 

[123]

Actually, I don't need the path, and I would kill the power. I just need to know which wire runs from one switch to the other switch or to the load itself. That "which of several unlabelled runs" is my angst right now.
...

• Buy a simple digital multimeter. I got one for $15 and it measures AC/DC voltage, resistance, current, and has a continuity tester (i.e. buzzes if the resistance is zero).
• Study this page showing the possible configurations of a 3-way lighting circuit. You'll be trying to identify which one matches your 3-way circuit.
• Shutdown all power to the circuit. Confirm by measuring AC voltages at both switches and the light fixture.
• Draw a diagram showing how everything is currently connected within all three junction boxes. If wires share the same color, mark them (colored marker, tape, whatever) so you can tell them apart. Make a second copy of the diagram; you'll use the copy for markup purposes.
• Disconnect everything; remove the switches and light fixture. Make sure none of the wires touch anything (another wire, the junction box, etc).
• Clear the area of family members and pets and then turn the power back on.
• Carefully measure the voltage between all combinations of wires in all junction boxes. Write your measurement results on the markup diagram. One of the boxes will have a wire-pair (i.e. cable) that shows voltage. This cable is the "Line" and it comes directly from the fuse box (or breaker box).
• Turn off the power. I repeat, turn OFF the power to the circuit.
• Re-connect everything according to the original diagram and turn the power back on.
• Using the 3-way reference diagrams, identify which one represents your circuit. If the Line enters via either switch box, then you are in luck. If it enters via the lighting fixture's junction box, you are much less fortunate.

I'm not sure how it works with zwave switches but with X10 Switchlincs the Companion switch (the slave) is installed in the junction box containing the Line cable. The Master switch is installed in the other junction box where its Load wire (Red for Switchlincs) connects to the light.

If the Line enters the fixture then your only option is to re-wire the circuit as I described in your other post.

If the Line cable contains two black wires (my, you do have an old electrical system), instead of black and white, then you need to identify which is "Hot" and which is "Neutral". If the circuit is powered, there's 110V between Hot and Ground and 0V between Neutral and Ground. If you remove the fuse from the circuit (or turn the breaker off), you'll measure 0V between Hot and Ground.

The attached diagram is a simplified view of an electrical service entry. The neighbourhood's transformer steps down the voltage to 220V (apprx) and the neutral line runs to the transformer's center tap thereby creating two 110V AC sources (and two phases but lets forget that for now). All neutral lines within the house are connected to ground at the fuse/breaker box. The "Hot" wire is the one that runs back to the fuse box and is protected via a fusible link or a circuit-breaker. The "Neutral" wire runs back to the fuse box unprotected (i.e. no fuse) and directly to the AC service entry.

Good luck!

 

[CollinR]

Vivek you might consider one that also supports time domain reflection. This will give you the wires length or distance to open or short, more $ but with the amount of wires in some of these guys houses it ~might~ be worthwhile.

Think of this...

Something hardwired stops working, you plug you tool in and it spits back circuit open 12'. Now you know which wire and you know whats wrong and you know how far up the wire the problem is. Excellent for those spots you really don't have access to after drywall goes up.

Maybe something like this
http://www.valuetesters.com/TX2001-Graphic...ult-Locator.php

I mention it as toners aren't cheap and I like swiss army knives.

I want a Rapport337
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/wonwoo/i...CFQq1IgodQ1utoQ