Hello,
Total newbie here and as you can tell from my name..... I'm definitely not an electrician. I've done a bit of electrical hackery in the past, mostly in cars and a bit of soldering, but this all feels a bit beyond my ability and I'd rather not be electrocuted and die before my 30th birthday. Afterwards..... we can reassess
Last week, I replaced my bedroom light switch, essentially a standard SPDT light switch with Common Live, Neutral, and Two Switched Live Outputs (L1 and L2), albeit only one was wired up.... with a 21st century equivalent, a 'Smart Wi-Fi switch'. Indeed, I can now turn my lights on from work...... why you'd do that, I'm not sure?
Anyway, having seen what a trivial task that was, the boss has now decided that we should do the bottom of the stairs too, but that's a whole different gravy train..... for a number of reasons:
The bottom of the stairs has a faceplate with 3 separate switches.... Switch 1, controls the outside lights. Switch 2, controls the hallway light. Those two are easy, as I'm guessing from a purely electrical basis, the wiring is the same as the bedroom.
Switch 3....... from what the Internet is telling me, is referred to as a '3-way switch combination' ? So it can be 'live' in either position.
I vaguely understand the electronics behind this, to a certain degree..... I've not removed the faceplate, but I'm guessing this single SPDT switch will have two wires for the switched lives, one in L1, one in L2.
When L1 is live, to complete the circuit the upstairs one will have the same combination (or vice versa) and either one can break or make that circuit? Perhaps the dumbest explanation ever, but yeah, it will make sense to someone perhaps.
That all sounds delightful, but I've looked at the rear of this replacement panel and it's a totally different ball game.
The one above isn't the one I am fitting but is basically the same wiring. We have a neutral far right, common live next, and then we have 3 switched live outputs, L1,L2,L3. I guess the way this device works, is that it's a simple state machine, L is powering the hardware and the software controls which of those are hot and when they are hot, the light will come on.
By wiring this in, am I going to effectively render the upstairs switch redundant? I assume that the upstairs switch will only work if the downstairs smart switch is permanently on? The same applies to the downstairs switch..... Am I going to be left with a floating live wire? I've read that the easiest solution is to simply rewire the upstairs one to passthrough current at all times and to blank the face off altogether. That doesn't sound clever, or safe to me.
As you can tell, my knowledge somewhat ends around the time I begin to hypothesise if we can actually fix the issue at hand without killing myself? I've already ordered the 3-way but I can easily use it in the kitchen if this can't be solved. Kitchen is three lovely SPDT's that turn on and off a single set of lights each Ahh. Lovely.
Total newbie here and as you can tell from my name..... I'm definitely not an electrician. I've done a bit of electrical hackery in the past, mostly in cars and a bit of soldering, but this all feels a bit beyond my ability and I'd rather not be electrocuted and die before my 30th birthday. Afterwards..... we can reassess
Last week, I replaced my bedroom light switch, essentially a standard SPDT light switch with Common Live, Neutral, and Two Switched Live Outputs (L1 and L2), albeit only one was wired up.... with a 21st century equivalent, a 'Smart Wi-Fi switch'. Indeed, I can now turn my lights on from work...... why you'd do that, I'm not sure?
Anyway, having seen what a trivial task that was, the boss has now decided that we should do the bottom of the stairs too, but that's a whole different gravy train..... for a number of reasons:
The bottom of the stairs has a faceplate with 3 separate switches.... Switch 1, controls the outside lights. Switch 2, controls the hallway light. Those two are easy, as I'm guessing from a purely electrical basis, the wiring is the same as the bedroom.
Switch 3....... from what the Internet is telling me, is referred to as a '3-way switch combination' ? So it can be 'live' in either position.
I vaguely understand the electronics behind this, to a certain degree..... I've not removed the faceplate, but I'm guessing this single SPDT switch will have two wires for the switched lives, one in L1, one in L2.
When L1 is live, to complete the circuit the upstairs one will have the same combination (or vice versa) and either one can break or make that circuit? Perhaps the dumbest explanation ever, but yeah, it will make sense to someone perhaps.
That all sounds delightful, but I've looked at the rear of this replacement panel and it's a totally different ball game.
The one above isn't the one I am fitting but is basically the same wiring. We have a neutral far right, common live next, and then we have 3 switched live outputs, L1,L2,L3. I guess the way this device works, is that it's a simple state machine, L is powering the hardware and the software controls which of those are hot and when they are hot, the light will come on.
By wiring this in, am I going to effectively render the upstairs switch redundant? I assume that the upstairs switch will only work if the downstairs smart switch is permanently on? The same applies to the downstairs switch..... Am I going to be left with a floating live wire? I've read that the easiest solution is to simply rewire the upstairs one to passthrough current at all times and to blank the face off altogether. That doesn't sound clever, or safe to me.
As you can tell, my knowledge somewhat ends around the time I begin to hypothesise if we can actually fix the issue at hand without killing myself? I've already ordered the 3-way but I can easily use it in the kitchen if this can't be solved. Kitchen is three lovely SPDT's that turn on and off a single set of lights each
Ahh. Lovely.
