all right I just put a new three-way switch in and for some reason
it doesn't work sometimes but it does work other times why is this happening [Music]
all right so I had a really good question asked to me this actually happens quite a bit if you're
out in uh you know like putting new devices into a home and you guys are just kind of ripping through
and somewhere along the line somebody miswired one of the switches so it's kind of indicative usually
if you have a three-way setup where like one side doesn't work the other side will so you'll just
flip it into the other position that changes the nature of power being sent over to this one and
now this one will work but the problem might not be on this hot side I have my incoming hot then I
have Travelers and then I have a switch leg that goes up there so hot side is incoming hot switch
leg side is the leg side that goes up to the light so if you have some of the conductors on
the leg side switched normally you're just going to notice a problem with the one light source or
like the group of lights that you're working on a lot of times on the hot side if there's a problem
you'll notice when you switch something on an entire room will switch on or like multiple rooms
might turn off or turn on it kind of depends on the situation not always but a lot of times with
the hot sometimes somebody will have wire nutted something together and then now they're instead
of passing the hot through the box they're using the device mistakingly they're hooking the hot
up to the device so the connection for the the rest of the circuit only happens once you flip
the switch into a certain State when you flip it back if there's no longer a connection through to
the rest of the circuit that's not only a hot side thing or only a leg side thing I'm just saying a
lot of the times when you realize that when that's happening when you see multiple rooms I tend to
just go to the hot side first because I know a lot of times they did something with the hots and then
on a leg side A lot of times it's just this Source again there's 50 ways to wire stuff and that's not
always the case so you could have one or the other so how do we go about fixing something like this
so you kind of have to pay attention to what's happening between the two switches so it's kind of
indicative when you have this side that will not do anything you know this is the side that there's
a there's a something's being affected too this is probably not where the problem is it's probably
not being sent power for it to be able to change States again not always there could be some weird
stuff going on but my feeling about this situation is that when I go to this side and I all of a
sudden change it now everything works over here so I'm like okay this seems like it's fine it's
just that when this is sometimes doing something different it's not okay so my bet is that the
problem is over here so what I'm going to do is first go turn the breaker off so I can take this
apart look at it see if it's something switched put it back together and we'll see if it works
all right now that the breaker's off I'm going to go to my leg side
again that's just where I've got a hunch foreign
I actually love this little thing because it's only one speed it's just for taking screws out
it's so light it's tiny I can stick it in my pouch like uh you don't need this monster drill that
you're carrying with you all the time if I'm not like drilling into something trying to pop holes
or drill through masonry I don't need a big clunky drill on me I keep this little thing and I love it
anytime that you take a device out you don't want to just like rip the thing out you want to look
at it first and be like okay well I know there's nothing going weird there's nothing like loose
because sometimes loose terminations make things happen as well and then you slowly when you're
troubleshooting always very slowly pull everything out it's not because you're going to get
electrocuted I mean you could I guess you should get shocked maybe but you don't want to change
the state of whatever is happening so you always want to look around very slowly take everything
out and once you realize okay me messing with this device is not going to change the problem
or change the state of the problem and now I'm chasing a ghost then I pull the whole thing out
so what I've got here is I've got one conductor going on a gold screw and I've got well I've got
a red already on my black so I know that there's something screwy there a Red's gonna be a traveler
the Red's not going to be a hot or a leg again could be depends on how somebody wired something
but already that's kind of like suspect so I've got two black Travelers and a red on my black
screw so I have a three-way switch works is on the back side of this you can kind of think of
like a flapper in there that's not how it works internally it's like a it's a different thing
but the way that I conceptualize it is I like to think that there's a piece of metal going across
here when the switch is in one position and when I switch that switch into another position the
flapper goes like this and goes boom and connects these two so all a three-way switch is doing is
just going boom boom boom boom that's why we call this the common screw because this is the
one that has everything in common so when you switch it into any state this one is always a
part of the the situation these two are not it's switching back and forth anyways so another thing
that we can look at is well this is a 14 gauge conductor it's a lot you know like skinnier these
are 12 gauge conductors so these are probably in the same 12 3 sheathing and therefore they
should be Travelers so that's my that's what I'm suspect of the other thing is always look at the
sheathing so back here I've got one black coming from 1 14 2 and I've got two 12s black and red
that are coming from a 12 three the same sheathing your Travelers are always going to be in the same
sheeting they should be unless you have some kind of tricky crazy illegal little three-way dead end
three-way Chicago three-way like weird stuff it could be weird stuff but if you know that this
house was wired by y'all and it's like present times and there's nothing weird old 50s wiring
then it's probably that you just got these mixed up so I know first and foremost okay I've got two
Travelers here my two Travelers should be my gold screws and my 14 should be the one that goes on my
black screw because that's the switch leg your switch leg and you're hot on both sides of a
three-way this is your hot side your hot is always going to be on the black screw on this one and
your switch leg going up to the light is always going to be on your black side on this this device
so let's just switch these two around pretty confident that this is going to be the problem I'm
so confident in fact because I actually set this problem up myself I know this is going to work
but I'm gonna act really super surprised for y'all
[Music]
all right now
get it all magically foreign
[Music]
ER back on
and before this thing did nothing oh man look at that but what happens when we flip it into the
other state well it still comes on I wasn't doing that before so now everything works no matter what
if you flip it on you can flip it off here if you flip it off it actually comes on but then
you flip this one on so you'll also notice with three-way switches there is no on or off State
it's always changing if you start in one end of the room and you come in and you the lights
off we'll say and you flip it and you go to the other side and you flip it off and then you walk
back through notice it's completely changed now so now when you flip it up it's on when you and
you just keep doing that now it's going to go on now it's going to go off well not off up but a lot
of people are like wait the switch is upside down no it's not three ways are always going to change
if you continually go in one side and go back out the uh the same way then they'll always stay like
the same but once you go in one side and out the other and then come back around it's going to keep
like changing states which is why none of the three-way switches say on or off on them like a
single pole switch does there's definitely an off and definitely an on so that's it hope that helps
you out in the field stop wiring stuff backwards love you crazy people see in the next one