UPB or Insteon?

[pjwinstalls]

I am going to be building a new house and will be doing the electrical. I want to have slave keypadlinc that arent controlling a load but controlling other switches/dimmers. Should I run x/2 or x/3 to the switchboxes?

Thanks

Philip

 

[rocco]

Philip, All you really need is x2 going from the breaker panel to the switch-box. The black would be HOT and the white would be NEUTRAL. That is also all you need for an Insteon or UPB transmitter.

If the switch controls a light fixture, you would use an x2 there as well. The black wire would then be SWITCHED-HOT and the white wire would be NEUTRAL return.

If you wanted the light fixture to support a ceiling fan as well, you could use an x3 wire, making the black wire HOT, and the red wire SWITCHED-HOT.

If you also wanted the ceiling fan to be switched from the switch-box, you could use the x3 and make both black and red switched, or you could run two X2 cables.

 

[upstatemike]

Never wire based on what you plan to do first but what you may need to do in the future.

Never do infrastructure wiring to support a specific technology. You may want to change things some day so you should have enough wire to support several switch options including plain old manual switches.

In this specific case I would run an x/2 feed to the switch box and then run an x/3 from the switch box to either the fixture or to the switch box that has the switch running the load. Even though you won't use the x/3 at first, you will be set to do something different in the future if you want to.

Other folks may have differing opinions on this.

 

[pjwinstalls]

Other than having a light fixture support a fan, which i wont be doing at all....what other possbile uses are there for using the x/3 wire?

Thanks!

Philip

 

[rocco]

I know of only two reasons, but there are probably others:

A 220vac circuit.

A conventional (non-automated) 3-way or 4-way light circuit.

 

[upstatemike]

Other than having a light fixture support a fan, which i wont be doing at all....what other possbile uses are there for using the x/3 wire?

Thanks!

Philip

New LED light fixtures that will be coming on the market in the next few years may offer some new options that require an additional conductor to activate.

Powerfail fixtures will be all the rage in a few years. They allow your regular light to run for a short time on a backup battery built into the fixture but require a continuous hot feed to the built-in charger circuit in addition to the switched hot that normally controls the light.

How do you know you will never want the fixture to support a fan (or a rotating disco mirror ball) at some time in the future?

The point is to put in enough wire for whatever unforseeable thing that may be coming down the pike.

 

[pjwinstalls]

Thanks to everyone for the help!

 

[RandyKnight]

I have said before that I plan to put enough wire in my new house (both HV and LV) that it will provide structural support. :lol:

IMO you cannot overwire. You only get once chance without sheetrock on the walls. I would HATE to have skimped on somthing to save a few hundred dollars only to have it cause me grief down the road.

Of course, I make my living building databases and spend a great deal of time trying to overcom database designs that were built just for a given application and are inflexible / not extensible so I may be biased.

 

[xlucent]

Wayne,

In one of your earlier posts to this thread, you referred to converting a traveller wire in a three way switch to neutral. How do you do that?

I have a whole boat-load of three way switches in my 35 year old house. None of them seem to have neutral wires. (Well, one of them appears to have a neutral but I'm not positive.)

I also have a bunch of Switchlinc V2 Insteon switches I bought that I can't use unless I figure out a way to get neutral wires to the boxes. (Yeah, I checked a switch before I bought the Switchlincs...unfortunately the only switch in the house that seems to have neutral wires.)

I know I saw a discussion here a while back about some options in this situation but can't find it.

Bill

 

[WayneW]

Wayne,

In one of your earlier posts to this thread, you referred to converting a traveller wire in a three way switch to neutral. How do you do that?

Rather than a sloppy drawing I made, let's use page 8 & 9 of the Insteon manual. Page 8 shows a conventional 3way circuit. Page 9 shows an Insteon virtual 3 way circuit. If you don't have the neutral connection shown at the bottom of the diagram on page 9, you can "convert" the "traveler 1" wire at the top of the diagram to carry the neutral. Basically, you would connect one end of "traveler 1" to the neutral of the left switch and the other end to the neutral of the right switch. There isn't anything to "convert" as the wire doesn't care what it is doing, but we are converting its function. When a black, red or blue wire is converted to being a neutral wire, it should be marked with white electrical tape to effectively change its color.

 

[xlucent]

That seems simple enough. I guess I misunderstood the point of the neutral connection. I thought that, in addition to running between the two switches, the neutral needed to run back to the main panel.

Thanks!

Bill

 

[WayneW]

Yes, it DOES need to run back to the main panel. I didn't mean to imply that you should disconnect any of the existing neutral connections. So when you connect the converted traveler to the left switch, you are ADDING it to the existing neutral wire nut.

 

[xlucent]

Now I know I'm confused!

In the diagram on page 9 of the Insteon Switchlinc manual, it shows Traveler 1 capped off at both ends so it is essentially just a hunk of wire running through the wall between the two boxes. Then it shows the "correct" way to hook up the Switchlincs with the neutral connection of the two Switchlincs connected to a neutral wire that runs from the bar in the main.

If I don't have that neutral wire from the main available connect to but, instead of capping off the two ends of Traveler 1, I hook one end of Traveler 1 to the neutral connection in one Switchlinc and the other end to the neutral connection in the other Switchlinc, I can see that I'd have a connection between the two Switchlincs but how do I get the "converted" traveler to connect back to the main? It seems to me it would just be a hunk of wire running through the wall connecting the two switches but not grounded back to the main.

Am I missing something?


Bill

 

[BLH]

If one of the boxes doesn't have a neutral in it to be carried by the converted traveler. You still have to get one from someplace. That is why I still have a few X10 switches and the rest Insteon or Icon. No Neutrals in my switch boxes.