How To Fix a 3-Way Switch System

this video is for educational purposes only and only competent persons should attempt this repair hi this is bill for Sparky Channel today I'm going to show you how to fix a 3-way switch system a 3-way switch system is composed of two 3-way switches that can control a light or a group of lights so our situation here is that we turn that on and it goes on and off and it goes off and on let me go over here it operates properly I'm gonna go over here whoops it doesn't work now you know we turn this this way and now it works and now this doesn't work so this is a 3-way switch system there's something wrong with it and so I am a licensed electrical contractor and I fixed this many times professionally so I'm gonna share with you my method for fixing this situation and get it to work right the first thing we're going to do is test out this voltage sensor and there you go and that's our test to make sure that's working quickly see the lights on so there has to be electricity going through this cable so that shows that this is working properly and the next thing we're going to do is a very important step and we're going to turn off the circuit breaker so these are screwless wallplate you can't see any screw on the outside and the way take them off is yes there's a little indentation right here you put your flathead screwdriver in there and it's pop right off okay I'm gonna take my voltage sensor again I'm gonna double check and make sure there's no electricity in these boxes okay with the circuit breaker off I've pulled out both of these 3-way switches and I'm gonna double check make sure everything's off first thing you do is you you double check to see that they are indeed three-way switches this one has a black common terminal green grounding terminal and on this side it has two brass terminals that are your traveler wire terminals so we've seen that it is a three-way switch if you have a toggle switch type three-way switch one thing you'll see right away is that there's no marking for on and off and then you turn it around this has a little different configuration here's your two brass terminals that are for your traveler wires and here is your black common screw you check on both switches okay here's your your black common terminal and here's your two brass terminals right here that are for your traveler wires and normally traveler wires are red and black so that's correct at least the color wise and this is correct at least color wise so what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to remove these switches and we're going to do some tests okay I'm removing all the wires from both of the switches I have removed both of the switches and I have found that both of the boxes have two black wires and one red wire and one green ground wire so that's proper we have enough wires there was just some problem and wiring to tell you the truth it doesn't matter what the problem was in wiring because we're gonna rewire it so that's my method you take it apart and you just rewire and it's gonna save yourself a lot of time nine times out of ten you'll save yourself a whole lot of time and effort and problems for the next step I have put wire connectors on all of the wires for safety then I turned on the circuit breaker so the circuit breakers on right now I'll take my fluke voltage detector that we have tested out to make sure it works and I'm looking for a live wire now that live wire is going to be a hole here is right here only one wire it's going to be live and that's this one right here we call that the line wire I'm going to take a piece of red tape so this is the line wire right here so only one in both boxes that's hot so I'm going to take a piece of red tape I'm gonna put it on the line wire and I'm gonna write line on it right there so here's your line wire so that means that these two wires are traveler wires that eliminates this as a traveler wire if it's a line wire it's not a traveler wire so we have to traveler wires if you need to know more about traveler wires you can watch my video on how to wire a three-way switch system but out of the three wires you have a line wire and then automatically the other two are traveler wires okay so now we're gonna find the traveler wires over here and that step is very important we're gonna turn off the circuit breaker okay the circuit breakers off and now we test the line wire and see the electricity is off so that's like a double check the next thing I'm going to do is I want to bring in a meter this is my fluke one one seven electricians meter I'm going to turn the meter to continuity right here we've determined that these are the traveler wires okay so I'm going to hook these two traveler wires together now this is remember this is what electricity off so now we're gonna go over here I'm gonna take off all these wire connectors so I've got these two hooked together and with the meter on continuity I'm going to look to see which ones over here are these two traveler wires see this travels over to this box and it's a red and a black so that's a hint for us so I'm going to go ahead and put an alligator clip on one of the Reds and on one of the blacks I'm not hearing any continuity so let's try this one okay there it is all right so these two wires are these two wires okay so get that out of here all right so these two are the traveler wires that means that this is the load wire if this is the line wire that brings the electrical energy into the box these two are traveler what that means that these two are traveler wires and we just did a continuity test that shows that these two wires are these two ours that means that this is the load wire that goes to the light so I'm going to put a yellow piece of electricians tape on this and must a load line ground traveler wires ground traveler wires and load wire so I'm done with a meter that's all I need for the meter right now these are the two three-way switches check and make sure this both switches have two bronze terminals a black common terminal and it's important you put them at the right way up it says top right here and down the bottom there's a self grounding clip so we're gonna go ahead and wire these now okay I like to crimp the wire around the terminal and then tighten it down real well okay so that's our ground wire and now I'm going to take our traveler wires and it's my preference to put the red traveler wire on the top and I'll do that for both switches okay that's the red traveler wire very nicely secured okay that's the black traveler wire it's nicely secured alright this is the line wire that we tested and found a line wire okay that's nicely secured okay so so crimp the ground wire around the terminal and secure it well then this is your load wire that goes to the common terminal this is the top right here so I always put the red traveller wire on the top that's what I put over here so I'm going to do the same thing over here top and top okay so here's our black traveller wire and I'll go ahead and put that to the lower traveller bronze terminal okay and now this is our load wire it goes to the light it's a load wire okay the load wire goes to the black common terminal so let's take a look at this we got the line wire going to the black common terminal on this on this side we have the load wire going to the black common terminal for this switch line and load and on this side we have the traveler wires the red going to the upper terminal and the black going to the lower terminal so see it's identical we got red black red black if you wanted to switch it it would work like if this was black and this was red as long as there are traveler wires it would actually work that this is my preference and I'll show you the sequence that this makes for later I think it's a more logical sequence as far as turning on and off the three-way switches and the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put black electricians tape around both of these switches for safety I've put on the backing plates for both of the switch boxes for screwless wallplate and you just put them on like that so there you go alright so the next thing we're going to do is turn on the circuit breaker and we're gonna see how it works okay this is proper see we have both of these depressed on the bottom it's on both depressed on the top it's on and anything else okay this is both both depressed on the bottom that's on anything else it's off see so on on off on off on on off so you can walk into a room turn on the light walk over to the other side of the room turn off the light and go your merry way so there we go we've fixed a 3-way switch problem and the problem actually was in each of the boxes the black wires were mixed the line wire was going to the traveler terminal and the traveler wire was going to the common terminal and the same thing over here except the load wire was going on the traveler terminal and the traveler terminal was going on the black comments crew so it doesn't matter what the problem was but that was the problem see you turn off the circuit breaker and you check to make sure that you do have three-way switches then you find the line wire which ever box it's in you find that line wire and over here we found the line wire and we knew that the other black and red or traveler wires so then we hook close together and over here we found with the meter with a continuity test we found the traveler wires over here and by process of elimination we found the load wire which is the wire that goes to the light so then we're able to wire them correctly this video hasn't been sponsored by anybody so is used what I felt was the very best of each tool and device I'll put links in my video description for the Fluke one AC voltage detector the fluke one one seven electrician's meter the fluke meter hanging kit the Levitan Decorah plus spec grade rocker 3-way switches the DeWalt 12-volt max impact driver the whee-ha number two one thousand volts.com holes perfectly Waco lever nuts the DeWalt cable stapler canny pecs electrical installation pliers and eight inch diagonal cutters and last but not least the Carlin light and fan box thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Sparky Channel

Views: 189,599

Keywords: 3-Way Switch, Switch, 3-Way, wiring, wiring video, DIY, Fluke, Fluke 117, Fluke 1AC II Non-Contact Voltage Tester, Voltage Tester, Wago Lever Nuts, Lever Nuts, Leviton, Leviton Decora Plus, Decora Plus, Commercial Grade, spec grade, federal specification grade, WAGO 221 Lever-Nuts, DEWALT Cable Stapler, electrical wiring, electrical, switch wiring, light, How To Install a 3-Way Switch System, 3-Way Switch System, Sparky Channel, Sparky, fix 3-Way Switch, 3-way switch repair

Id: EGyXhV0p-4w

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020