The Best 4 Way Switch Explanation Ever!

shame on you you watched my best three-way switch video and just as soon as the light clicked on and you understood it you shut it off and went back to your regular youtube feed well if this is you i'm gonna tell you just what you missed stay tuned hello i'm terry peterman the internet electrician and in this video we're gonna pick up where you may have left off in my best three-way switch explanation video ever now if you haven't seen that and you don't understand the concept of three-way switches yet please i've linked in the description below that video so go watch it once you understand it all i urge you to stay with it through the duration of the video because you'll learn about four-way switches briefly in that but if you get three-way switches and you want to understand the four-way then you've come to the right place we're going to take a deep dive into the four-way switch so when do we use a four-way switch well you need a four-way switch when you want to switch a a light or a group of lights from more than two locations so a common application for a three-way switch would be either end of a hallway but you want to also say add that switch at the top of the stairs to turn those lights out if you've gone upstairs and you don't want to run back down to turn them off so in that case anything more than two locations you need to add a four-way switch and you can add as many of these as you'd like but a common common application would be say three to five areas that you might wanna turn on those lights like you're entering a living room from the kitchen area from the hallway from the front door there's your three locations and you need a four-way switch all right so i'm going to take you through my infamous white board drawings here and just show you how the three and four-way switches work together so like i said if you understand the three-way switch here's a three-way at the top a three-way at the bottom and this is our four-way the star of today's show right here in the center so you understand that here's our power coming in on that black wire the orange here represents a neutral let's just get that out of the way right now you're going to have a two wire in plus ground of course but we've got the neutral coming into the first three way spliced off to the four-way switch splice through off to the next three-way switch splice through always continuous neutral to everything so there's your neutrals let's forget about those for a while so now you know that a three-way switch either goes like this connects from here to there or it connects from here to there depending on the position of the switch so let's take this position for example all right so power coming into the common the switch is in the down position it's going to go to this traveler which we're going to have as a black wire so these are three wire cables now between all the switches that's three wires white black red plus a ground of course we've left that out for simplicity so coming on to the four-way switch and then back to this three-way switch just to finish up with those let's say this switch is down it would be on to the light okay but let's see what happens in the four-way switch so what it does is it is either going to be in one position it connects these two sets of terminals together okay so let's follow it through again power coming in first three-way common switch is down comes down on this black traveler wire goes through the four-way switch onto the three-way switch that switch is in the down position and your light is on okay now let's switch any one of these and you know what happens so if you understand the three-way switches you take and turn either one of these guys to the other position the path is broken the lights off until you change the path again so back to focusing on the four-way switch let's make everything on again so that's in the down position light is on someone comes and switches the four-way switch to a different position what happens with it is now it criss-crosses so follow it again power coming in through the common onto the traveler that switches down this switch somebody moved the position of it turned it to the up position or whatever it might be now the power is coming down on this red wire hits this three-way switch nowhere to go the light is not on come along to this three-way turn it to the up position now your lights on so as you can see no matter where you are in this circuit if the light is on or off you can change the status of that light or group of lights by moving any one of these switches let's try it again so now the guy comes along turns this switch up alright so following it through power comes in down on the red criss crosses over to the black comes down to this three-way no power no power to the light till you switch either that switch or you come back to our four-way the star of today's show and they turn it back the other direction now power in through the common to the traveler straight through the four-way onto this common of this three-way over to the common and the light is on again switching any one of these will turn it off all right now i'm gonna show you a close-up of an actual four-way switch and i'm gonna tell you the most common error that people make when purchasing a four-way switch on a four-way switch these terminal sets on the back will be labeled input and output so look for that make sure that your switch is in the right box at the home depot or wherever you're buying it from because i've seen four ways and double pole switches get mixed up so i'm going to show you the difference and how they're labeled but it's so important to open that box if you're buying it in a box a check to make sure that it is actually a four-way switch and not a double pole switch because what a double pull switch does instead of criss-crossing they look exactly the same in most cases but they're labeled differently they're called line and load in a forward in a double pole switch so a double pole switch does is simply this if it's on those are connected if it's off it's just like two single pole switches operated by one toggle so that's also called a double pole single throw or a double pole switch so you got one mechanism that turns both these either off or on and as you can see all that would do in this circuit then you would be able to interrupt the path of the current and you would be able to shut off that light with this switch regardless of the positions of the other three other two-way other two three-way switches so i'll show you a close-up of those switches okay so bear with me here i'm going to try to do my best to give you a good steady close-up of these two switches and how you can make a mistake purchasing a four-way switch i've had many questions over the years people telling me hey my four-way switch network does not work and the first thing i ask him is are you sure that you picked up a four-way switch because have a look here at leviton for example these two look awfully similar in the box and they look physically saint the same as well but you look and see one says a switch double pull back and side wired and the other one says a framed switch and that says side wired four-way so also you can have somebody that opened the box and mixed them up or else through one box into the other shelf location so be very very careful let's have a look at the back side of these to see the difference okay so taking it out of the box here is the double pole switch you see it says on the toggle there that's the off position and that sorry it's hard to think backwards here when you're trying to work with the camera and that's the on position flipping it around to the back we're going to do our best to get that focused in and you can see one set is called line and the other set is called load so now let's take a close-up look at the four-way switch as you see there is no indication of on or off on the handle no indication and then looking at the back we're gonna go in for a nice close-up [Music] and you can see there input and output as opposed to line and load on the double pole switch all right so now we understand the difference between a four-way switch and a double pole switch now let's go if this isn't solidified in your mind yet i'm going to take you to the animation from my program the basics of household wiring and we will show the animation now let's see how this four-way switch setup will function when electricity is flowing through the circuit incoming current will arrive first at the first three-way switch's common terminal with the switch in the down position the current will pass through to the left traveler terminal and travel along the black traveler wire until it reaches our four-way switch here with the switch in the down position the current will pass down through the switch and continue along this black traveler wire until it reaches the second three-way switch once the current arrives here it will pass through to the three-way switch's common screw if the switch is in the down position in this case the current has an unobstructed path through the circuit to reach and illuminate the light let's back out so we can see this path clearly the benefit of a four-way switch setup is that at any switch along this path you will be able to turn off or turn on the light notice how the path of the current is affected as we turn off and turn on the flow of current a complete circuit is broken or created every time there is a flip of the switch okay so just to give you a practical application of how you would add a four-way switch into an existing three-way switch network let's look at my demonstration board here and before you comment that this is a poor job of electrical wiring or anything keep in mind this is just a teaching tool i use for different scenarios so i'm always pulling wires in and out and showing different examples of what i'm trying to teach so what you have here now is power coming into this box on this two wire here's the three-way switch i've got a three wire going over to the other three-way switch and a two-wire up to that light so this three-way network functions as it should now if you're going to add a four-way to it you would basically want to get into the middle of this three wire between the two three ways so always remember to add a four-way network or to have a four-way network you have to start with a three-way switch and you have to end with a three-way switch in between you could put as many four-way switches as you'd like so the best way to do this would be wherever your location might be if you were lucky enough to have enough slack and that's where you wanted your new four-way you would just cut this switch this wire this cable i'm sorry put it into a box and put your four way here but in all likelihood you're not going to have enough length so you would have to shut off the power of course undo your splices pull the three wire cable out of both boxes and add a new length to wherever your new four-way is gonna go so from the first three-way to the four-way out of that four-way with another three wire to the last three-way and up and so if you looked at the most simplest form cutting this cable here you would splice back your neutrals together and you would put your inputs on black and red coming from one switch and your outputs on black and red heading over to the last three way in the network so that concludes my best four-way switch explanation ever video to go along with the 3-way switch video thank you very much for watching i would so appreciate if you gave this a like and if you subscribe to my channel we're nearing that magic 100 000 subscribers so i hope you help me get there and please leave a comment as well in the comment section here tell me anything you'd like to see in future videos and let me know what you think of this one and click that notification bell so you'll know when i release a new video thanks again for watching terry peterman the internet electrician

Channel: Terry Peterman

Views: 50,978

Keywords: 4-way switch, 4-way switches, 4-way switch explanation, how does a 4-way switch work, understand 4-way switches, double-pole switch, double-pole, 4-way, difference between a 4-way switch and a double-pole switch

Id: Zbpl3M0DJFs

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021