How To Fix A 3 Way Switch Problem

Oh guys welcome back to my channel as promised let's first of all let's look at this shirt ok switching dude you trust me so as promised we are going to figure out and diagnose why this light will not come on and go off like a regular freeway have you ever been in somebody's house and you let's say you go down the steps and you can't turn the light back on and you come back up and all of a sudden it's like you know will it work down here and won't work up there bla bla bla let me show you what I'm talking about so you come you go downstairs and you go downstairs ok and you turn right off alright let's say your wife is downstairs and she's like oh no light switch I need to go downstairs well she turns it back up she thinks it's on so she comes downstairs and you try to flip it up nothing happens ok so now you're like um ok so it works up top it doesn't work down here but what's going on here right so you have no idea what's going on today we're gonna diagnose and fix why and how to leave you at that problem guys stick around [Music] [Music] all right so that was a little corny but anyway you get the picture I'm sure you've been one side of the kitchen or another your wife or you your husband whatever it's flipping the switch and the other side will not work can't figure out why you get pissed off you take all the switches out you don't know what you're looking at because all the wires look like you know like piano keys you don't know what's what so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna show you how to easily fix this problem that anybody can do all you need is a screwdriver you don't need two people that's better a few people obviously I've had one person here and a meter of some sort with ohms on it stick around guys all right just like in my last freeway video we're gonna make sure that my ugly mug is not in the picture the whole time it says what we're looking at as he switches this is what we need to really learn how to do okay the first thing we need to do is make sure the power is completely off now I'm rotating liberties and I know the power is off okay so we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna diagnose this problem now we don't know what's which is messed up here obviously I do because I'm the one who did it but I'm gonna show you and tell you why it is like it is on this set and how I'm gonna fix it okay we're gonna go ahead and start we're gonna take your switches back out all right so with the switches out what we're gonna want to do is we're gonna want to take every wire except the ground wire off here why not the ground well because you already know that the ground is ground it can't be anything else now it can be hot I've seen it be hot before not on the ground screw obviously but I've seem to be hot and seen it be hot on what that even make sense I have seen it hot yeah that's not a little better and so you need to make sure but obviously I know for a fact that this is not hot because I'm the one who wired it so okay what we're gonna wanna do is we're gonna take all these wires off the switch all right we're gonna want to separate all the wires stay right here so we're hitting a separator with the blacks and red black ribs we'll get them loose all right so what we're gonna need is a meter of some sort like this one right here and what you're gonna want to use is ohms okay as you can see right there there we go yeah she's focusing okay little I like the little what looks like echo button now it's ohms but continuity rather and I'll let you listen to what it sounds like okay so what will happen is it'll say oh well open line when you pushed your wires together your leads together it'll say okay so let's do it that way you know you can visually see and hear because you can visually see and you can hear what's going on let's get started guys now we're gonna assume that there's drywall over here all you have is just these two boxes and that is it because usually this will happen after the electrician leaves because he has no idea how to wire up a switch I've seen as many times before and unfortunately sad situation because you know the electrician wants to do good but he can't because he don't have to now I'm not bad-mouthing electrician I'm just saying it is what it is so to find this circuit that's hot you're gonna have to turn the power back on for Celyn okay so you can leave somebody at the panel in case you get shocked or you can just be very careful now I already know what the hot is but since you don't and maybe this is going on your house right now I'm just gonna show you how to find it okay remember I separated every wire so everything is loose as you can see right here I mean you can you can see playing a simple I loosened all the wires up nothing is touching anywhere okay so now what we got to do is you gotta take that meter over there and we got to put it on bolts now if you have if you have one of these don't have to be this one you can use this but I prefer meter because these will pick up like a lot of bleed off and if use a meter that the only thing is gonna pick up is the Hotwire guaranteed now you can go to your ground but you should always go to probably your neutral on this only because the ground may not be hooked up some work I have broken broken ground and then you may think wait a minute maybe I don't have a hot here but then all sudden you find out the hard way that you do so let me show you how to use their neutral and the hot and all the wires in conjunction to get your hot wire okay now we don't know I know but we don't know what sides a hot one sides of switch like okay and you may or may not know in your house that either so we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna assume that we have no idea what's wet here okay so we're gonna show you exactly how to figure out where the hot is on this one alright so now with your meter now this is this is a meter that has all kinds of different features on it all you really need to know is volts here okay AC volts so we're gonna go ahead put it on here okay and we see there's volts okay I'm gonna turn my light on so we can see and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to check and I'm gonna see if there's any voltage here okay now what we want to do is we don't touch one lead it doesn't matter which one to the black wire since we know that the white neutral we want to go ahead just leave it on there okay so just hold it on there now we're gonna check each one okay alright check each one okay we have no volts there whatsoever let's move it over next switch okay alright we'll go back to the neutral try this wire first we have nothing we'll try read this wire first we have nothing we'll try this one our next ah 122 volts so we know that that right there is our hot okay at this point we want to make sure that we remember what wire and where that is so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna move it all the way to the back and move these all all the way up here okay so we're gonna leave that one all by itself right now now we're gonna go back to the panel we're gonna turn the breaker off and make sure that everything is safe alright at this point what I would do I would take a piece of black tape like so just so you're aware of what's what and we heard no powers off I would just take a little piece of black tape here and just wrap it around there just so we know that this is the hot all right so this box now says to you these are your travelers that's your neutral we can go ahead and put the wire nut back on this because we're done with this okay you go and push that back in the box travelers and your hot or your comment on your three-way okay now we need to go there and figure out what's wet over here right okay so this could be you know all the way across the room this could be in the next room this could be who knows where so this is where two people will come in very good to play but since we're all we'll see close I'm just gonna show you a real easy way no we don't know what's what here okay we have no idea but we do know that these two wires definitely are your travelers right so the best thing to do is to take straight you can either straighten these out which I'm gonna do so after you straighten the map you'll want to go ahead and just put them together now you don't have to I always said twister joins it but this one you don't really have to do because you're just gonna take us right back apart this is just defined so we do know this is the hot right could we put tape on it so this is completely out of play all you have left is these two wires all you wanna do is put your wire net put the wires make sure they're under there now you can twist them okay if you want to I'm not going to as you can see I'm just gonna go ahead and put him under here if you're not wiring it you can tape them up but just make sure you tape them up good now you're gonna come to your other switch now you have all these wires out here right we got to figure out your switch legs and you got to figure out your travelers go we have no idea what's what we already know the neutrals are neutral so we can go ahead and put a wire knit on that now how are we gonna find out exactly where your travelers are and where your switch leg is okay so which set is the wire going to your light right here okay so all we have to do we know we put a wire in it on two wires over there so we got to find those two wires right so what we have to do with our meter is what to put it on continuity right there so we'll put it up there we'll make sure it says ol4 open line and what we're gonna do why it's there we're just going to go ahead and test our meter we heard the beep so we know it's working all right we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna take our leads doesn't matter which one you do all right well go to this one first and we'll go cuz we know one over there is our red right now it doesn't always mean it's gonna be red over here but for this purposes it's gonna be red so we'll go with the black the black what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your lead you know there's no hot here and I would just put your thumb right on it okay and then do the same thing with this no beep we're gonna go to this black to this red nothing we'll go to this black to this red ah there we are so just to make 100% sure we know that these two are beeping together right now this will make quick work if you had a second person you somebody will walk over here and they'll take off the machete somebody on the other side will walk over there and take the wiring it off you hear beeping BAM okay now we know that's it and you can do this okay we know that that's the wires so now we have our travelers these two and these two and we know that this wire right here is definitely 110% our switch leg so now it's just a matter of putting the switches back on okay so if you haven't watched my other 3-way video how to wire them up you can look right up in there and you'll see how to wire up but I'm gonna go ahead and show you one more time right here okay it's pretty cut-and-dry pretty easy you have a black screw and brass screws right here brass and brass okay this is your comm and are you HOT or your switch leg and these two were always your travelers every single time okay dollars do it so that we know we know where our travelers are we know where our hot is we know where our switch leg is let's start on this switch right here hook it back up all right be there are towers so we'll for the hata or the switch leg on first alright there's that switch let me know this is our hot because we put you put a piece of tape on correct so we'll go ahead and put that on first and that goes on the black screw or the the colored screws you can call it I guess it's not brass so it's the colored I guess that looks more like black to me alright we know that goes there and like I said before the travelers really don't matter I'll go ahead and show you here alright go ahead and we gotta bend our beans in our fire as I unbent it per se we'll push our switches back in the box and now guys the moment of truth all right here we go home three two one all right so far so good BAM all right yeah you can check the other switch again down up up and just like that guys we fixed the problem now what was the problem right people are wondering so on this whit's particularly what I did is I purposely took the hot and I put it on a traveler side so obviously it would only work when that traveler was switched to that one side okay pretty easy guys okay so you know there's so many more things I want to do and I want to just I want to do them but you have a specific idea or whatever let me know guys in the comments below guys if you like what you see you like and subscribe god bless and we will see you guys on the next one have a great day you

Channel: Why Not DIY

Views: 117,223

Keywords: diy, how to, jeff comer, mike gardiner, mountaineer outdoors, fluke multimeter, fluke, 3 way, 3-way switch, three way switch, threeway switch, 4-way switch, fix, problem, troubleshoot, troubleshooting, voltage tester, ac, switch, grounding, toggle, klein tools, solid wire, light, hallway light, can lighting, pliers, feit, led, cfl, replacement, repair, lights, diagnose, situation, new, handyman, free, home improvement, light bulb, wired, wire volt, amps, wats, restore, 3way switch, stairway light

Id: zNKDTi3N6H4

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 15 2018