Hi, I’m a Vera newbie. Bought a few outlets and switches to get started. My home is unfortunately wired without the neutral wire at the switches. I notice most ZWave and Insteon switches require this. What are my options short of rewiring much of my house?
From an electrical point of view, if you can get a wire into contact with a cold water pipe or some other metal that is grounded (ie goes into the ground) you can do that. They make clamps you can get so that you can clamp the wire to a pipe.
Plus, it’s a lot of fun when you touch that pipe with bare feet!
There are Z-Wave switches (look at GE/Jasco) that operate without the neutral wire, especially dimmers. They operate the same way aliens describes, using some of the voltage between the hot and ground, but also include over current protection for added safety.
So going with the dimmers, you may be OK, unless you have a florescent bulb. Then you are looking for alternative wiring.
I’ve seen the 2-wire dimmer switches. Sounds like I’d need to remove my CFLs and go back to the old school filament bulbs though eh?
Some dim-able LED’s behave well with the dimmers, some not so much (even the dim-able can see the leak of voltage in the dimmer and you can get a bulb that’s on like 1-2% all the time).
Trial and error, I guess.
It seems counter to the mission of home automation if you get stuck with energy eating bulbs. I rationalize each purchase I make with some kind of energy offset!
Thanks. Does anyone have data on which dimmable LEDs work with the dimmer switches?
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There’s also the Leviton VRS05 2-wire switch; but incandescent only (for the same reason).
Thanks for the responses everyone. Found this interesting (and thorough!) thread here:
Hi jmueske,
Thanks. Does anyone have data on which dimmable LEDs work with the dimmer switches?
I have been doing a series of tests using Z-Wave 2 and 3-wire dimmers with dimmable CFL’s and LED’s for the past few months. My latest test results were completed this week with Leviton 2-wire dimmer model VRI06 and Dimmable LED’s and is published on my blog,
http://blog.haworldonline.com/using-leviton-2-wire-z-wave-dimmer-switches-with-dimmable-leds/
I have also done tests on Evolve and Linear Z-Wave Dimmers (they are the same switches but Linear is alot cheaper than the Evolves) and I have unpublished results for GE Jasco Switch Model 45612 as well, including dimmable CFL’s on everything also, again as yet unpublished. I will publish them on my blog as time goes on or will be happy to do so on here if the moderators would rather me do that instead of refer people to my blog.
Hope this helps!
In lots of countries in europe this is not allowed anymore since most of the piping is not metal anymore nowadays , lots of plastic , and aluminium.
Cor
For a neutral wire this is not allowed according to NEC.
@haworld - great stuff on the tests. Real world testing and info is always appreciated. Looking forward to your other tests.
@TC1 - thanks thats nice to know they are appreciated, it seemed like a good idea but I am happy to know they are helpful.
I will keep this thread posted as I am able to do more tests, if anyone has any suggestions as to specific things I should be testing for but may have missed, I welcome the input.