Have you ever hit your head on a wall so much that it actually hurts to stop?
For the past 4 weeks most of my free time has been spent getting a stupid three way switch to work. Now I’ve wired many homes and three way switches were never a big deal to me.. It should have been evan easier in this case because all the wires were in armour flex.. thus I could use the color red for the switched leg instead of taping or coloring the neutral.
Tied the grounds together, tied the neutrals together, connected the hot lead from the circuit breaker and then had the two switched legs.. feed up to the second switch.. from the second switch I connected the load to the terminal and hooked up the two travelers.. stuff everything into the box check to make certain the wires are not pinched or touching and turned on the circuit breaker. Hmmmm no light! well I might of switched the travelers, nope! check that I have voltage coming in, yep! confirm that the load was wired properly, check the travelers again, yep they are correct! reverified that there was still voltage coming in and sure enough everything was as it should be..OK maybe there is a defective switch pull everything out and check with an Ohm meter, Hmm everything works as it should but what the heck! pull a couple of new switches out of the box and replace them.. Still no luck!
OK if everything fails read the instructions. They kindly put a wiring diagram on the box and I used it to confirm that everything was correct… still nothing worked.. I then got a wiring book and confirmed again that I was doing it correctly..
Now I’ve passed frustration and I randomly started to swap wires between the hot and the two travelers. Eventually I found a combination that would turn the light on and off if one of the switches was in the correct position. no combination would have both switches work correctly!
What I originally expected to take an hour and a half, I wound up spending all of my free time for a month! I wound up pulling the wires out of the armour flex and replacing them I’d tried so many differant combinations the wires had gotten brittle and I was forced to keep shortening them untill the whole wires needed replacement.
This morning I got up and bingo. found the problem.
Replies
you're not gonna tell us?
I wired it correctly. It took me all of two mintues...
He is going to let us pull our hair thin for four weeks before telling us.
Bad switch?
Consult an Engineer?
Joe H
Remember I tried new switches without any luck. and yes I consulted with two engineers and an electricain who all agreed I was doing it correctly.
The light was bad?
Allen in Santa Cruz
Seriously... are you ever gonna tell us?? :)_____________________________HomeBase__________________________ LLC
the suspense is killing us or is one of those things that you just can't abmit in public???? i'm going with the light bulb or a wire broken off in the fixture. larry
hand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.
The light works. Bad switches.
Hmmm...may be you should have tried two new engineers and a new electrician.
Edited 3/1/2005 12:44 am ET by TOMCHARK
I pulled a wire from my house to my garage to power a small welder or compressor. When I got everything tied in, I put a tester on the circuit and sure enough, it read 125 volts. So then I plugged the welder in and NOTHING! What the he**?! I checked the breaker, and it was all right. I dug up the wire to check for cuts, but didn't find anything wrong. I pulled my hair out for days trying to figure out what went wrong. Finally, I gave in and pulled the wire out of the conduit at the house and saw a place on the wire that didn't look right. I cut it open and discovered that the hot wire had broken, but was still touching. The result was the wire would read voltage, but as soon as a load was hooked to it, it would separate effectively acting as a fuse and taking years off my life.
VERY frustrating week!