How To Wire a 3-Way Switch System

this video is for educational purposes only and only competent persons should attempt this installation hi this bill for Sparky Channel today I'm going to show you how to wire a 3-way switch system these are switch boxes I'm going to be putting blood plates over them on which I'm going to put the 3-way switches so these are switch boxes and this is the light box right here so let me first show you the cabling this cable that comes into this first box right here is what we call the line cable this is 12 2 with ground now you could also use 14 gauge but I'm using 12 gauge and this is the hot wire this is a neutral wire those are your 2 conductors you say 12 2 that's what you're talking about 2 conductors with ground and so this is going to bring the electrical energy into this system I have it coming into the switch box this time this right here is a 12 3 with ground cable so we have three conductors we have two hot conductors the red and the black and a white neutral conductor and we have one ground so this is 12 3 with ground and over here is the same cable as this and this is also 12 3 with ground it travels from this box to this box and that's an important word for us travels because these are these red and black conductors are going to be used as will be called traveler wires and we'll be going over that in just a moment this cable right here goes to the light and this is a 12-2 with ground and of course there's a 2 conductors the neutral in the height and one ground and so that comes out up here in the light box here are the two 3-way switches that I'm going to use these are made by Levitan and you see there's each one of them has two brass colored terminals and each one of them has a black colored terminal and two green colored terminals we'll start with the green color terminals first these are for ground and so we'll be hooking our ground wires to these terminals the black terminal right here is where I'm going to be hooking what we call the line wire this terminal is called the common terminal and the hot line wire the one that brings the electrical energy ends of the system goes to this common terminal the red and the black wire or what we call traveler wires because they travel between these two boxes and two switches and they are going to be going to the brass color terminals on both of the 3-way switches on this side the electrical energy will be going to the light in a switched banner through this cable right here so the black hot wire would go to the common terminal on this side so we would have the the black hot wire on this side bringing the electrical energy into the system and on this side it brings the electrical energy to the light in a switched manner and either of these switches will be able to control the light of course you could have this at one end of a room and this at one end of a room or this at one end of a staircase and this at the other end of a staircase and either one of them can't control this light I've put wire connectors on all the wires for safety and I have turned on the circuit breaker I'm going to make some tests first so I'm going to this is my fluke one AC voltage detector I'll go ahead and turn it on and so this is the cable right here it's bringing the energy into the box and it's the hot wire the neutral and the ground so that's proper the only the hot wires should be showing hot I can also test that the other wires that are not supposed to be hot or not hot so we just have the one that is supposed to be hot hot so that's excellent the next test I'm going to do is I'm going to use my fook 1 1 7 electricians meter and see what the full t's we have it's always good to test before you get too far along and see what voltage you have it's 120 2.5 volts ac you see if you do all this wiring and then find out you've bad voltage you just wasted a bunch of time so it's always a good idea to check and see what you got 122 point 5 was an excellent strong voltage so the next move I'm going to make is I'm going to put an alligator clip on my black lead I'm going to put that on the ground and we've got 120 2.6 so this shows me that we have an excellent return path to ground and that we have a good ground in this system the first thing I'm going to do with the wiring is I'm going to get all the grounds together now I'm going to bond these boxes with a bonding wire which isn't entirely necessary in this case because both of these quality switches do have self grounding clips that's these bronze items right here and the thing that activates the self grounding clips code wise is that you need to take off one of the paper washers see these paper washers right here well these could just came right out of the box and there is no paper washer so I don't have to do that that's a considerate of Levitan I am going to be adding a bonding wire for the steel box however as a redundant bond for the box that will doubly protect in the case of lightning or a power surge you see back here there's a place to screw on your bonding wire and it's actually a 1032 screw and I'm going to put it right on here yes good and tight and so this wire will bond this metal box to the grounding system the house I have one for this side as well yeah nice and tight now I'm going to get the ground wires together for this box and this is a wiggle lever net it's a five connector wiggle lever nut and I'm going to put in one two three ground wires and then I'm going to add a pigtail that I've prepared and put that right in there and click it down now you can always check with these way go lever nuts you can see here that they're all in there very well and clamped down so this is ready for the switch so I'm going to go ahead and put this back into the back of the box okay there's two neutrals here in the box and this is a two connector wiggle lever nut we'll put it like that and like that and now we're going to put these into the back of the box now that I've got the grounds of the neutrals together I'm going to go ahead and put on my mud plate these mud plates come in different sizes this is a half inch blood plate four half-inch drywall we tighten that down like that and I'm going to take my ground wire right here and it's going to go in a clockwise manner around the terminal and I always crimp them I think it makes for a better connection if you crimp them now here's the common terminal right here and this is your line wire this one we test it out we know it's hot so we're going to take that and put it to the common terminal right here and then I'm going to go ahead and tighten that down securely then we're going to flip it over this way now see this is where the self grounding clip is and this is up and that's down so I always put the red traveler water see these tools are traveler wires that's what makes the three-way switches operate so I always put the red wire on the top okay and I always put the black wire on the bottom I always do it this way I always put the red on the top and the black on the bottom and I'll gonna do that for both of the switches so there we go that's tightened down very well so we have the red traveler wire on the top bronze terminal we have the black traveler wire on the lower bronze terminal and over here we have the line wire on the common terminal and the green grounding wire on the green grounding terminal now we're going to get the grounds together on the second box so we have this ground that goes to the light I'll put right in there and we have this ground that comes over from this box and here's the bonding wire that goes to the metal box okay and then here's a pigtail that I have prepared that will go to the second three-way switch push these into the back of the box okay so here's our ground wire for the three-way switch now here's the two neutral wires it's the one that goes to the light that's the one that came over from the other box and we're not using the neutral wires for our switches some of the fancier switches you do need a neutral so I'm gonna put this right into the back of the box so now I've put on the mud plate and I'm going to go ahead and tighten it down here's our second three-way switch and once again that self grounding clip goes down and we're going to put the ground wire around the terminal in a clockwise manner and tighten it down securely these are the traveler wires right here this is the one that goes to the light so we're going to be providing energy to the light with this wire so it goes to the common terminal okay right there okay now so once again with the grounding clip going down we're going to put the red wire to the top bronze colored terminal right there tighten it down securely and I'm going to once again put the black traveler wire to the bottom brass terminal and tighten it down securely so for both of these switches before I put them in their boxes I'm going to put a couple wraps of black electricians tape around them for safety okay you need to dress the wires push them in as necessary okay so now we're gonna hook up the light this is called the cross piece is for 832 screws okay in our case we want these just cross piece to be nice and level so that down these screws right here I'll use the wiggle lever net that the two connector size to connect the ground wires and see and I do have this ground wire looped around this green grounding terminal there and you're in some neutral with this right here like that these widows are nice because you can use them on stranded or on solid wire so there's a stranded wire there's a solid wire just put that right in there okay and then we got the hot just stranded wire in there take it down the solid wire in there click it down so there we have the light installed now I'm going to install the Levitan screwless wallplate it's called screwless because there's no screws showing so you put on the backing plate first and then you take the wall plate and snap it on like that I've now turned on the circuit breaker and I've installed a light bulb and that's see how it works so say you're walking into a room you turn on the light you'll walk across the room you turn off the light so that works properly need to try different sequences and it all works properly now remember when I wired the traveler wires I ran the red traveler wire from the top brass terminal to the top brass terminal and throw black to the bottom brass terminal to the bottom brass terminal and this is what happens if you do that it's pretty neat ok if is her paddle switches so if the paddle switch is depressed on the top on both ends it's on it was depressed on the bottom and both ends it's on so that's how you tell that it's been wired the way I like to wire it which is straight across on the top and straight across on the bottom you could wire it like this and you would get the same result it's basically a wire a traveler wire going from the top brass terminal to the top brass terminal and so forth I like to do it this way that's my preference now if you cross them if you go from the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top you're gonna get a different sequence that to me isn't as logical this is much more logical okay press both the bottom once it's on either press both the top once it's on and the other positions of course off 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 speck grade rocker 3-way switches the Cline 8 and one nut driver the DeWalt 12-volt max impact driver the whee-ha number 2 one thousand volts.com holes perfectly Waco lever nuts the DeWalt cable stapler and last but not least the Carlin light and fan box thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Sparky Channel

Views: 1,079,882

Rating: 4.9059548 out of 5

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, Cable Stapler, electrical wiring, electrical, switch wiring, receptacles, light, How To Install a 3-Way Switch System, 3-Way Switch System, Sparky Channel, Sparky, Wago, DeWalt

Id: cOFKnAGOPg4

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020