My name's Aaron Massey and welcome back to another
episode of Home School'd.
For today's project, I'm gonna show you how you can make
your home just a little bit smarter, by updating your
switches to new smart devices that you can control
from your tablet or smartphone from anywhere.
I rate these projects by how many f bombs you're likely
to drop while tackling the project.
This one is pretty f'n easy, but it can vary a little based
on the type and age of the wiring in your home.
The good people over at Leviton sent me some of their
new smart home switches to include in my latest remodel
project, so I wanted to show you guys how I went
about doing that.
But before we actually go about replacing this switch,
I just wanted to give a basic overview
on how a switch works.
Understanding how it works helps you know how to fix
and replace things if things go wrong.
Now this is an example of a typical basic switch.
We've got a single light on a circuit, with the switch
installed to control the light.
We've got three wires, the black wire, which is
the hot wire, the white wire, which is our neutral wire,
and the bare copper wire, which is the ground.
In this example, when the switch is in the on position,
current flows from the panel to the switch, and out
to the light through the hot wire.
The current then passes through the bulb, illuminating it,
and then returns back to the panel through
the neutral wire.
If everything is going as it should, the ground wire
doesn't do anything.
When the switch is off, the flow of current is interrupted
on the hot wire, so that the circuit can't be completed,
and the light doesn't illuminate.
So now that we've seen kind of the basics of how a switch
like this works, we can replace it, and the first thing
that I'm gonna do, is to remove the cover plate
and the existing switch.
You wanna make sure that the power is off at the breaker,
and one way to test that is to use a voltage tester like
the one I have here.
If the voltage tester beeps, that means
there's voltage present and it's not really safe
to work on the wire.
Once you verify that the power is off, you can actually
remove the switch itself.
I understand that many of you may have old wiring in
your home that's hard to identify.
Much of my house is like that.
Using a voltage tester can help you figure out which
wires are which, as well.
With the switch out of the way, we can look at our wiring.
We have our load wire going to the light, our hot line in
from the panel, and our neutral wire's connected in the
wire nut in the back.
Our ground wires are also connected with the wire nut
with a small piece of extra wire coming out of it, which
was connected to the ground screw on the switch.
This technique is called pig tailing, and it allows you
to only use one wire on the ground screw of the switch.
A common electrical mistake that DIY homeowners often make
is connecting multiple wires to a single terminal
on a receptacle or a switch, which is against the code
and if an electrical inspector looks at it,
they're gonna fail it.
So now we're ready for our new switch, and as you can tell,
it looks considerably different than the previous.
The new one has a lot more terminal screws, it has a silver
screw, a reddish screw, a green ground screw,
a black screw on the other side,
and a screw underneath this piece of
tape, which says only to use this terminal if it's a
three way switch.
So in this case, we're not gonna worry about that.
Now the difference between this switch and a typical switch,
is that this switch actually requires a neutral wire.
Which is the silver terminal screw.
It comes with an included wiring diagram in case
you get a little confused, but first I'm gonna start by
connecting our hot line wire from the panel, to the
black terminal screw on the switch.
Next, I'm connecting the hot load wire that runs
to the light, to the red terminal screw.
From there, I'm gonna take a small piece of extra white wire
and create a pig tail for the neutral connection.
I'll strip off each end of the wire just enough so that
one end can be tied together with the other neutral wires
under the wire nut,
and the other end can be secured
to the terminal screw on the switch itself.
Lastly, I'll reconnect the pig tail ground wire to the
ground screw terminal, and then I like to take a piece of
electrical tape and wrap it around the switch, or the
receptacle and cover the terminal heads.
Because people have a tendency to grab receptacles or
switches from the sides when they're pulling them
out of the box, which can create a circuit, and get
yourself shocked, so I like to just eliminate that
by putting some electrical tape around it.
And encourage people to when they're pulling out
the receptacle or a switch out of a box, grab it from
the top and the bottom, rather than from the sides
to eliminate the risk of shock.
And then once that's done, I can push the switch
back into the box.
So that's it as far as the actual wiring of the switch,
and it may seem a little bit confusing, but trust me,
as you do it a little bit, you'll get more
familiar with it, and as long as you can keep track of
which wires are which, you'll be totally fine.
So now we can actually focus on what makes these
smart devices, and to get started, we have to download
the my Leviton app from the app store.
Once you have the app downloaded, just follow the
set up prompts to set up an account.
Find and name your device, and once it's done, you can
control the switch from your smartphone or tablet
from anywhere in the house, or from across the country
if you want.
And there are dimmer versions of these
switches available as well.
Another cool feature about these devices, is they actually
work with your Amazon echo, or Google home as well.
So to set that up, all you need to do is set up your
Amazon echo or Google home.
- Hello, your Amazon echo dot is ready for setup.
- [Aaron] Link it to your my Leviton app, so that they can
communicate, and then you can just ask Alexa to turn on
or turn off your lights.
Alexa, turn off the light.
Now I understand that replacing an electrical switch
isn't for everybody, and maybe you're a renter, but you
still want to have a little bit of a smarter home.
Leviton also makes these plugin versions of these
smart devices, so you can plug this in to any traditional
outlet, plug in the device that you want to control
with it, maybe it's a fan, or a lamp, or a stereo.
And then you can control whatever device is
plugged into this smart device as well.
Well that's it for this episode of home school'd.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
And I hope you learned something.
Most of all, I hope it gave you a little confidence
that you can tackle some of your own basic electrical
tasks around the house, without having to outsource
it to somebody else.
I wanna say a special thank you to Leviton, for
sending over these smart devices, so that I can use
them in my latest remodel, and if you guys wanna get
a hold of your own decor or smart switch, make sure
you go to the link in the description down below.
And use the promo code mrfixit at checkout
for 30 percent off.
And if you wanna check out more of my videos, I'll leave
links to those right here.
Or you can always visit my website at
mrfixitdiy.com.
Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll
see you next time.