New home wiring for 3-4 way situations

PaulD

Active Member
Been reviewing earlier posts related to wiring new house switches and I am looking for feedback on my approach. I desire to use UPB widely but want to retain the ability to move back and forth between UPB and conventional switches for resale purposes. I anticipate using an HAI Omni Pro II system for HA and I am not interested in including some other Brand X controller specifically for lighting control. Also, 100% of all electrical boxes of any kind would be deep boxes to aid future changes.

If I understand UPB switches correctly, you have one master load control unit somewhere (does not have to be in area of the load) and all the other switches are slaves which use low voltage wire (Cat5e/etc) to communicate with the master to tell it what needs to be done (on/off/dim).

If true, it appears to me that:
- you have the option of using Cat5 in a daisy chain from master to all slaves OR home running a Cat5 from master and each slave back to wiring closet and doing the interconnect from there.
- only the master needs 120v to directly control the load. Slaves are not directly connected to the load via 120v.

If I have that straight, my dilimena is how to wire the house in the begining so I minimize wire runs yet retain the option to go conventional or UPB. I would like to start with mostly conventional and move to UPB over time as budget permits. Also, I suspect that building inspectors in my area have zero famialiarty with HA and I might run into probems with UPB application that they are not familiar with. To do this, it appears to me that my strategy should be as follows.

1) Let electrician wire house in a totally conventional manner for all switches including all 3 or 4 way switches
2) Run Cat5 wire in daisy chain from master to slaves with Cat5 wire in an adjacent low voltage gang box (helps deal with inspectors)
3) When converting to UPB switches, electrical connections between master and slaves would be disconnected and use Cat5 to connect slaves to master

Question....is it feasable to use abandoned 110v wiring between switches for communication in lieu of running Cat5 wire? I suspect it may be too noisy for reliable communication between switches.

If I am off track, please educate me. If other/better options exist, educate me.

Paul
 
I think you may have mistaken UPB with another hard wired approach. UPB is powerline control, it does not utilize cat5 for communication. It transmits over the power lines themselves and does not require a special wiring methodology.

Some of the hardwired solutions use cat5. Centralite I think was one of them. If you are considering a hard wired ligthing solution, then now is the time to review it. I don't have experience with that though.

If you selected UPB you would not have an issue replacing switches with traditional switches. I don't use UPB but it is considered very reliable and if some of the changes in the gen 2 switches were available and there were not as big of a price difference when I bought mine I may have bought UPB for my install.
 
Paul:

I just went through this and decided to 'risk' it. I wired the whole house targeting UPB and have been happy. I ran 0 wires for 3 way switches. Every virtual 3 way for lack of a better term is just wired to power so it can talk. There are very few of these in the house. I think 3 of 50 don't control a local load. It saves a few runs to do it this way and has fewer wires in the boxes. For me it was just to simple to use all UPB switches. The stuff really works.

I didn't not use any of the UPB slave switches but these could be used to do what you suggest, I didn't want to use slaves because they aren't configurable. Basically the slaves connect to a 240 or a 130 to replicate the paddle.

Is compatibility with 'old school' wiring that important? I'm sure some people will argue this but I can't see going back. It will just make you think differently about electrical. I figured that if UPB died, I would just stick in some ZWave switches or whatever the new stuff is. It is just so nice being able to control everything in the house (.e.g. wife loves the all off button by the front door).

As mentioned above, do yourself the favor and by the newer switches (avoid ebay????) with the shorter delays...
 
Paul:

I just went through this and decided to 'risk' it. I wired the whole house targeting UPB and have been happy. I ran 0 wires for 3 way switches. Every virtual 3 way for lack of a better term is just wired to power so it can talk. There are very few of these in the house. I think 3 of 50 don't control a local load. It saves a few runs to do it this way and has fewer wires in the boxes. For me it was just to simple to use all UPB switches. The stuff really works.

I didn't not use any of the UPB slave switches but these could be used to do what you suggest, I didn't want to use slaves because they so I'm not sure about all of the features. Basically the slaves connect to a 240 or a 130 to replicate the paddle. There are no smarts.

Is compatibility with 'old school' wiring that important? I'm sure some people will argue this but I can't see going back. It will just make you think differently about electrical. I figured that if UPB died, I would just stick in some ZWave switches or whatever the new stuff is. It is just so nice being able to control everything in the house (.e.g. wife loves the all off button by the front door).

As mentioned above, do yourself the favor and by the newer switches (avoid ebay????) with the shorter delays...

With the price of copper these days, I think people will be doing more and more of this. I just got done wiring a 6000 sqft home with all cat5 wiring for the switches. You just have to resign your self to the fact that your home will always be a smart home :lol:.
 
OK...now I really am confused. All the wiring diagrams I have seen for multiple switches controling a load with conventional wiring show that only one switch would have wiring directly to the load and all the others are added in a daisy chain from the master switch. In that case, if I replaced the master with a UPB switch, how do I include the remaining switches on the power grid? Do I use the old wire to reconfigure all the switches in parallel so they are on the power grid? If so, it seems that one of those switches still must be the master and the others would be slaves....unless I still don't have the full story on UPB switches.

It would be great if I can drop a UPB unit into each switch outlet and do this by reconfiguring the existing wiring. Since there are different ways an electrician can wire for multiple switches, is there a specific way I should tell them to do it so this will work right. If anyone has a link to a diagram that explains this better, I would like to see that.

Paul
 
OK...bear with me as I get educated. I think I have found the answer to my situation.

The installation instructions for HAI UPB switches is at
http://www.asihome.com/ASIshop/manuals/37A...1c1c9f8ba6ab3ff

From the diagram included, the only real difference in switch wiring is that you need a 4th wire between switches to handle communications between switches and the load should be at the end of the line (vs between switches). A 5th wire is needed to light face plate LED's. To me, that means I should...
1) Make sure electrician wires all loads to be at the end of the line
2) Make sure electrician uses a 5 wire bundle between switches (or uses standard wire and adds a 4th & 5th wire for future use)

I don't know if a special wire is made for this application or not but that is next on my list.

Thanks all....this has been bugging me and hopefully I am on the right track now.

Paul D
 
The first system you referred to with Cat5 is made by EDT. That is where you have a 'normally' wired switch with Cat5 daisy chained for control. For UPB you can either use a regular switch with just hot and neutral and use links, or if you use the slaves all you need is a single 'traveler' between the multiple switches. Make sure the elctrician puts neutrals in ALL locations. You do not need 5 wire between switches. Just line and neutral (from anywhere) and a single control line/traveler between switches..
 
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