I need to come up with a solution for my basement rec room lights. To make it easier to explain I drew up a quick image. Circles are the light fixtures and rectangles are the switches. My main goal is a solution for the blue and yellow lights.
The blue lights are controlled from the top of the stairs and the opposite side of the room. The yellow lights are controlled from the bottom of the stairs.
The problem is that the blue and yellow lights are recessed lights and switching on only one or the other creates uneven lighting. I would rather turn all on and control the brightness via a dimmer.
To complicate the matter - these lights are on 2 different breakers. I started looking at how I could simply rewire the yellow lights into the blue circuit but gave up on that idea. It’s a rat’s nest of wires! Whoever did this job made a real hack of it. There are blank out boxes at the top and bottom of the stairs stuffed with wires connecting all over the place, not to mention all the weird connections in the switch boxes.
I would rather find a solution where I wire in z-wave dimmers and control all of it via scenes. So the question is what devices would best suit my needs?
Optionally I would like to control the red and green lights from the other switch locations too.
Unless I am missing something… just get 2 z-wave on/off switches or dimmers (can buy at Lowes) and set them to trigger the other switch when you turn them on or off. You can do this with an association or a scene. Depends on how complex you want it.
I hate to tell you this, but you really need to figure out your current wiring before determining a solution. For the 3-way circuits (blue and green), each Z-wave brand may be wired differently. Unless you have access to the wiring outside of the boxes (i.e. in/behind the walls), it doesn’t look like you can combine the blue and yellow circuits since they don’t share a switchbox. If you can figure out the wiring, then, as Roy suggests, you might be able to combine them functionally. But again, different Z-wave brands handle this differently.
[quote=“rwalker, post:2, topic:175313”]Unless I am missing something… just get 2 z-wave on/off switches or dimmers (can buy at Lowes) and set them to trigger the other switch when you turn them on or off. You can do this with an association or a scene. Depends on how complex you want it.
Roy[/quote]
I though about this. Reason for my post is I wanted to see if there are any other options I did not consider.
You are correct - the blue and yellow do not share a switchbox (they may but I do not know due to the rats nest of wires). That’s the first thing I checked.
I’m not sure I agree that figuring the wiring out is needed (beyond finding the load/neutral/traveller etc for each). In another part of my house I used Leviton because the circuit had no neutral and I needed 3 remote (child/slave) devices. For this problem GE/Evolve/Leviton/(Cooper?) could be used as I would wire up each circuit seperate and then handle the linking via association.
What I am unclear on is if I can handle dimming this way as opposed to just switching on/off.
I am also wondering if I can use Leviton zone controllers to accomplish what I need.
I did some digging and have a few follow up questions:
I read up on the GE dimmers and it seems they require specific wiring which means I would have to figure out the wiring. Plus the fact that they do not use neutral and thus do not dim LEDs/CFLs seems to make it a poor choice even though it would be my cheapest solution.
Leviton and Evolve come in at about the same price. I do have some Leviton’s in another place in my house where in that specific case they were the best solution. But again no neutral and I do not like how the dimmer buttons work.
That seems to leave Evolve (in the can afford category). Evolve also seems the best solution as all the devices only require live and neutral and the communication is wireless. But I have some remaining questions:
Can the accessory switch also dim the load?
Can I set the on level at something below 100%
If the Evolve does not support instant status can I still set associations between the switches?