My Insteon Installation experiences

M

mdonovan

Active Member
Hi all -

I thought I would share my Insteon installation nightmare. I had an electrician in to install all of my Insteon switches (50+ switches), many 3 ways and one or two 4 ways. He got to my house and got started, then came to the switches in 2 of the bedrooms. No neutral wire, so he was not able to put those switches in. Then he gets to the dining room and the 3 way switches are wired in a way that you can't use Insteon (as I recall he explained there was no load wire at the switch. I'm writing from memory, so hopefully that made some sense). I had given him the Smarthome tech line and he called and explained the situation and Smarthome confirmed that Insteon can't be installed in this situation.

Soooo, I had him walk through the remaining switches to be replaced and he found a couple other places that were wired the same. So at 5 hours in I made the decision to stop installing Insteon and pull out the ones already dine.

So now I'm out a couple hundred bucks for electrician time for nothing, I have to figure out what to do with all this Insteon stuff, and hopefully recoup some of the money I have into it.

This is a real bummer though. Lighting was a big part of my automation plans. Now I need to regroup.

So anyway, there's my experience, for what it's worth. YMMV.

Matt
 
I understand the bedroom issue with no neutrals, but not the other 3-ways.

For the 3-ways, you use the unused traveler wire to feed power to the other switch. So as long as you have power to one end and a traveler, you are good to go. What am I missing?
 
Herdfan said:
I understand the bedroom issue with no neutrals, but not the other 3-ways.

For the 3-ways, you use the unused traveler wire to feed power to the other switch. So as long as you have power to one end and a traveler, you are good to go. What am I missing?
Click to expand...
If it is like their X10 switchlincs/keypadlincs, your switchs and load have to be wired in only one specific way, i.e. - main switch, 3-way switch, then load. I had several places in my house that reversed that sequence or put the load in the middle and was unable to use the 3-way functionality. I still have 3 or 4 3-way companion switches I need to eBay.

In many cases I ended up putting in a keypadlinc where the 3-way would have been and controlling the main switch via an X10 signal instead. This worked because I had mostly double and triple-ganged boxes where the 3-way was with other switches so I could use their hot/neutral wires and just nut-off the 3-way wiring.

Brent
 
Hi Matt,

Sorry to hear about that experience.

I have a 1958 vintage house, so, I had to crawl up into my attic and string neutral wires down to my switch boxes when I installed my Insteon switches.

The SH website should probably **STRESS** that a neutral wire is required for these to work.

If you have overhead wiring, adding neutral wires is not be any big deal for a good electrician. The painful part is that he/she will have to crawl up into attic to do it. The other painful part is that it is extra cost for you.

Ken
 
Matt;

I don't know a whole lot about Z-Wave, but I believe they have a model of switch that does not require a neutral. Maybe check that out.
 
mdonovan said:
So now I'm out a couple hundred bucks for electrician time for nothing, I have to figure out what to do with all this Insteon stuff, and hopefully recoup some of the money I have into it.
Click to expand...
Matt,

Check with Smarthome and explain your circumstance... I expect that they will take these switches back.

Cheers,
Paul
 
Thanks for the replies.

bdeshazer: That is *exactly* what I had for the switches they couldn't do.

I agree with KenM they should stress it more. I did read that, but I thought that would apply more to older houses (mine was built 6 years ago). I wish I would have thought about this when the house was built, but I thought newer houses would have neutrals, but apparently not. I suppose I should take the hit for that one.

BSR: I'll take a look at Z-Wave again. I had looked at them before when deciding which switches to get, and they were really expensive compared to Insteon. That was a while back, so maybe the prices have come down.

Hopefully this will help someone else who is looking at home automation not make the same mistake. Oh well, live and learn.

Thanks for sharing my grief <_<

Matt
 
Matt, I think it would pay to find out exactly how many switches do not have neutrals. It sounds like it was maybe a small number. IMHO, I would not give up on the automation if there was a fairly easy way to pull neutral to the handful of switches that would need it. Almost all of the newer technologies will require it.
 
As a reminder, when using Insteon to replace 3 or 4 way switches, only one Insteon switch is EVER physically connected to the load (where with conventional switches they all would be able to power the load).

Then to get the 3 or 4 way functionality that is desired, you must link to the switch that is connected to the load. And yes, this assumes the neutral wire is available for each Insteon switch.
 
I am building a house now, and plan on using mostly Insteon for my HA as a retrofit myself. What should I tell the electricians to ensure a simple install? "Run a neutral wire to every switch"? Would they do that anyway? Is that standard procedure? What is a neutral wire anyway?

Skip
 
First, you want deep electrical boxes like the Carlon Superblue as opposed to the Zip. Every electrician wires houses differently as you can see by reading posts here. Without getting into AC theory and wiring, neutral is the return path for the circuit. It is a white (or otherwise indicated) wire. A light switch opens/closes the hot leg of the circuit so a lot of times an electrician runs hot and neutral to the light and only has the hot feed and return to the switch itself. Sometimes in a multi gang box there are neutrals available but many times in single gangs they are not. Just tell the electrician to make sure there is a neutral available in each and every box and you should be ok.
 
bdeshazer said:
If it is like their X10 switchlincs/keypadlincs, your switchs and load have to be wired in only one specific way, i.e. - main switch, 3-way switch, then load. I had several places in my house that reversed that sequence or put the load in the middle and was unable to use the 3-way functionality. I still have 3 or 4 3-way companion switches I need to eBay.
Click to expand...

And make sure they follow this order for wiring the 3+ ways.

Matt
 
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