![]() Warning, electrics are dangerous and you should seek the help of a qualified electrician. Getting a light switch neutral wire to your switch brings connotations of ripping walls apart and turning your home into a building site, but that does not have to be the case as we discuss below. The white traveler is capped off.“What does the neutral wire do?” is a common question among homeowners, DIY enthusiasts, and anyone interested in understanding the basics of household electrical systems. The "Load" would go to the red wire from the lower left cable.Īs it happens, the remote 3-way is already set up in an advantageous way, with red and white going to travelers and black going to common and that's already wired to always-hot. It goes to the lamp controlled by that 3-way (that's the red wire), and it is also the source of power for the box (black=always-hot, white=neutral).Īnyway, here, you would install the Lutron Caseta master, adding its always-hot to all the wires in the black bundle, and adding its neutral to the neutral bundle. The bottom left cable is kind of interesting. The top left cable has 2 3-way travelers (white and red) and always-hot (black) heading off to a remote 3-way switch. The top cable goes to a lamp, its wires are switched-hot (black) and neutral (white). From a brass screw goes the red wire, back to the Caseta's blue wire. ![]() That goes to the black screw on the 3-way. So in this case, the Caseta at the far end would send always-hot on the black wire to this location. If the switch is thrown, Caseta treats that as an on/off switch command. What it's trying to say is you connect a remote switch between the Caseta's black wire and its blue wire. If you want to use a mechanical switch, then you'll need to follow their guidance for wiring one, which is fairly illogical actually. Lutron Caseta all operates wireless, and their remote switches don't even use wires, so if you put the remote here you simply won't use the 3-way cable at all. That is where the smart-switch should go. On the rightmost 3-way, this is location is the "remote" and both power and lamp cables come into the other end. If your box allowed separators you could even put a separator in there. Indeed, the right 3-way is totally separate from the others, and should not be cross-connected. You need to solve each 3-way switch group as a group. you want to do all your improvement in this box. ![]() The problem is, you're trying to solve this problem as a box i.e. Should I pigtail it into the ground wire bundle in the box that is in the other circuit? For what it's worth, at the other location (in the garage) for the three way on the right there does appear to be a neutral bundle.Īlso, there's a ground wire that doesn't go anywhere from that far right switch. ![]() It's a three way switch on the far right and left, single pole in the middle. Here are a few pictures of the three gang box. I'm thinking I may just need to buy a different switch that doesn't require a neutral (Lutron Caseta PD-5WS). The two switches on the left come from one circuit with the neutral bundle, the switch on the right is on a different circuit and there's no neutral.Ĭan I use the neutral bundle from the other circuit in the box or is that a big no-no? If not, is there any other way to get around it? Well, like any project I get myself into, things didn't go as planned. I pulled the plate off and looked around and saw a neutral bunch so I thought I was good to go. I went with the PD-6ans which requires a neutral wire. Working on updates for our new house and I bought a few lutron caseta switches the other day to wire up in our front entryway.
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