Smart Light Switch Neutral Wire - Do You Need One?

all right hi this is James with the one hour smart home comm and today we're gonna talk about neutral wires do you need a neutral wire for a smart switch and how to check for one so first thing you're gonna want to do is make sure you got the power off and then you're gonna just remove the cover plate to your light switch that you want to install a smart switch on typically if you have a neutral wire in one year light switches you've got it in all of your light switches that's just how wiring code is typically a house built after 1985 is gonna have smart wiring and are not smart wiring sorry a neutral wire in a switch box and houses before 1985 might not now there are exceptions to this but in general that's that's what we typically find so all you had to do is make sure you get the power off you're gonna remove your light switch just like so that screws way in there and we're gonna check to see if we got a neutral wire and then we've got three switches here and we're gonna go through these three light switches so you can understand when you need a neutral wire and what your options are for adding a neutral wire or using a neutral wire and smart lighting in your home so these screws they're there they're a lot longer than I thought that we're in there so okay let's see we got that bottom one off let's get this one over here off okay so we've got the light switch we got those screws off now we're just gonna pull this forward so we can see what's in the switch box for all of you okay so we have a hot wire coming in over here we've got our load wire which goes up into the light the light fixture we've got our ground wires here that's this bare copper wire down here and we do have a neutral water we've got a white wire here and this neutral wire that means that we can use any of these three light switches any of these three smart light switches so I'm just gonna show you the light switches and talk to you about what I mean here so on the back of this light switch we're gonna ignore this wire for right now we've got four wires okay we've got a ground wire this green wire so that would connect to these bare copper wires here we've got the red wire which is the load wire that load wire would connect to this wire right here which goes to the light fixture we've got our black wire which is the hot wire and that hot wire would connect to the incoming electricity which is this wire right here and we've got our neutral wire right here okay so the neutral wire would connect to these neutral wires right here in a switch box just like so okay so you would connect this neutral wire to this neutral wire in the switch box so we could use pretty much any smart light switch for our home if we wanted to this is a Leviton dimmer switch highly recommend these lights which is these are nice light switches I've got a couple of these in my house and really liked them now there's last yr here you most people need to know about this but this is for 3-way dimming applications or three-way light switch applications this is what's called a traveller wire this is how you would wire up a three-way smart switch so that's gonna be another video another topic but that is what that extra wire is now here's another smart light switch this is one of the one on our smart home smart light switches these are really nice really economical and I just want to show you one difference here - okay look at the depth on this one versus the depth on this one well when you're trying to fit a smart light switch into a box a lot of times having this dinner depth is really beneficial because there's so much wiring and everything already in there that this makes it just a little bit easier than trying to fit this honking thing in there so that's just something to think about when you are considering smart lighting control is the depth that these light switches will go into so right here we've got you know the same similar wiring configuration we've got our red wire which is our load wire that would connect to this why right here we've got our black wire which is our incoming hot wire so we'd connect it to this one right here and we've got our neutral wire which would connect to these two wires right here and we've got our ground wire which would connect to the unshielded copper wires right here underneath you red wire nut so that light switch this one's available from us when our smart home comm you can find this on Amazon as well we'll include a link to that below so that's just a typical on/off Smart Switch there no I want to show you something a little bit different this light switch here in the middle I had it upside down there this Lutron cassette a light switch this one does not require a neutral wire okay and I'm gonna show you what I mean so on the back of this light switch all we really got is one two and a ground wire so we got just two wires and a ground wire this does not require a neutral wire and these are smart switches too so all three of these are smart light switches you can control them all with alexa with Google home as well as from your phone the only difference is these two right here the Leviton and the one on our smart home one these to connect to your Wi-Fi network directly these Lutron cuz settle ones they do require a Letran cassette a lighting hub which just gets plugged in next to your router it's a small little thing not a big deal really but these don't require on neutral wires so if you've got two older home this is a great option so how this wood wiring is your green wire would go to the unshielded copper wires underneath the red wire nut and then what's nice about these light switches is let's say you forget when you take these out which wire was where the orientation of the wires doesn't matter you could wire this so this is to the hot and this one is to the load wire or this is to load wire and this one is to the hot wire it doesn't matter the orientation as long as you get one on a hot one on load it's gonna work so that is kind of a nice feature about these and very easy to install so you got with this one the this is this is off and then dimming adjustment and it's got a little indicator over here to a side that is moose my dog he's wondering what's going on but uh yeah so this is a good option if you got older wiring or you don't have a neutral wire the the Lutron casita is probably your best bet for a smart light switch if you don't have a neutral wire so I'm gonna include links to all three of these light switches below and how do you recommend we've got a smart lighting guide that you'll check that out that's gonna answer a lot of your questions as well as a couple other posts that we have on our website at one our smart home comm I'm gonna include those so that you can have the information you need to make a decision on smart lighting but you know these are the three light switches I recommend the Leviton smart switch this is a Lutron cassette a light smart light switch and this is one on our smart home like smart light switch Wi-Fi requires a Smart Hub but doesn't require a neutral wire Wi-Fi and these two do require a neutral wire which we do have a neutral wire here so that's fine there so thank you for watching please like and subscribe to this video this channel it always helps us out and we will see you next time and click on any links below if you want to support us

Channel: One Hour Smart Home

Views: 201,491

Rating: 4.3670135 out of 5

Keywords: Do you need a neutral wire, how to add a neutral wire, neutral wire smart light switch, light switch no neutral wire, do i need a neutral wire smart light switch, smart light switch no neutral wire, no neutral wire smart lighting, how to tell if I have a neutral wire, neutral wire, no neutral smart light switch, neutral wire light switch, how to install a smart light switch no neutral, check for a neutral wire, light switch neutral

Id: d0jW06Ike24

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019