What Is A Neutral Wire? | Ask An Expert

hi my name is Steve Lee and I am the VP of integrator sales for Insteon so neutral wire is half of a full circuit and a circuit comes from your electrical panel it provides power to a device like a light bulb your TV and there are two wires that create that power one of them we call the hot wire and the other is the neutral wire and together those create a full path of electricity to go all the way around through your device and then back to your panel without that your device wouldn't work [Music] all right now why do Smart Switches need neutral wires now typically with a light switch you might have in your house all you're doing is it's a mechanical switch and you're just opening and closing that circuit and it's just taking the hot wire in and it's going up to your light and this is just interrupting the power the neutral wire actually just splices straight through your box right to your bulb itself now with a smart switch a smart switch is like a little electronic device it's almost like it's not actually a TV but it's a small device that would require actually the full circuit because it has a little operating system inside so it's not just a mechanical closure it's actually its own intelligent little device that does require that full circuit here you can see I have a neutral wire that I've pulled out of the back of the box and this is where we would wire that smart switch to so how do you know if your house has a neutral wire now older houses let's say we go back 50 years or more there's a good chance you might find a lot of your switch boxes that don't have neutral wires now it's been code for the last few years that you have to pull neutral wires and when a new building or when you're doing remodeling that the electrician had to put neutral wires in one way to tell is if you go to your switch box and you pull out your switch from the wall and you'll have two wires one is the hot wire coming in and the other is the load wire going out in the back of the box you should have a splice that has two white wires if you don't see that it's a good chance you don't have neutral wires [Music] okay so options for you if you don't have a neutral liar you're not completely lost we do have a switch that we sell and it's a two wire switch and what that does it actually works kind of like the mechanical switch does where it allows power to come in and go through but it works a little differently we've taken out the power line communication portion of it and only communicates by radio frequency but what it does it draws power through that circuit and it allows the switch enough power to operate it doesn't do the power line communication but it does do our outs so in a pinch we do have a two wire switch the other option is we have micro modules and micro modules with the help of electrician or if you're handy doing this kind of stuff what you can do is take the load wire and follow it up to where it goes up to your light fixture then you would connect that load wire to a neutral you would tape it white now it's your box instead of just having the hot wire and the low wire you actually have both hot and neutral you would connect your switch to it your Smart Switch you would cap off the load wire now there's another device that we saw called a micro module and the micro module would have to be installed up in your light fixture then you would simply link your switch to the micro module this is a little more of an advanced feature might be something you need electrician or somebody who's handy with this kind of stuff to help you with but there definitely are solutions for those customers [Music] right now go ahead and just scroll through the rest of our page and you can learn more about neutral wires [Music]

Channel: smarthome

Views: 44,450

Rating: 4.4879999 out of 5

Keywords: home automation, smart house, how to find neutral wire, without neutral wire, neutral wire, what to do if i dont have neutral wire

Id: gVNvSoQB5xg

Length: 4min 12sec (252 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020