Is anyone familiar with home electrical work? I'm trying to replace the two switches in a 3-way switch setup with a primary and a slave dimmer switch and the wiring of this 3-way switch doesn't seem to conform to any of the "standard" 3-way switch setups that I'm finding. I'm guessing I've got a line, and a load, and a traveller here on each switch but what's throwing me is why both the line and the load coming in on the 2 wire cable are nutted to the line and load going out on the three way cable with a third wire coming out of each nut and going to the 1st switch. See my artistic diagram below:

4/7/2014 7:35:09 PM

A little odd but it makes sense. The black being the line from the rest of the circuit and the white being the load to the light not neutral.

The traveler red is the common on both switches and connects to either the white or black depending on the position. If both switches connect the reds to the black then nothing is connected to either white. If both switches connect the red and whites then nothing connects the blacks (hot) to anything. If the switches are opposite then it will flow from a black on one to a red to the other switch and then cross over to the white and to the light.

I always learned on having a 2 or 3 wire into a switch box then another out to the light with the neutrals connected and the switch breaking the blacks. My current house was built I the 60's and all of the switches are similar to what you have. They ran the supply to the light then a single 2 wire line to the switch with the white and black to the switch terminals. Basically no neutral at the switch, just an in and an out with the white being the switched output.


[Edited on April 7, 2014 at 9:06 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2014 9:03:09 PM

Apparently this is referred to as a California or coast 3-way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching

4/7/2014 11:04:59 PM