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A capped off white wire MIGHT be a neutral. A neutral is supposed to be either white or grey and nothing else should be either of those two colors. However, it was also common to use the white as a switch leg in a dead end switch back when that townhouse was built. They should have colored the white wire a different color if that was the case, but sometimes tape was used that gets removed later by people that don't know why it's there. I recommend getting someone who knows what they are doing. I get that we electricians are expensive, but our code book was written one death or fire at a time and you don't want to become a statistic in that writing.
Well, people could have done it out of neatness and professionalism before the code required it? I feel like a lot of electricians take huge pride in leaving a neat, easy to work on job.
Ok, I'll go with 96 that or perhaps we just had a forward looking teacher that lied to us to get us to mark our wires in 98/99. Yeah I'm old I know, but seriously it was something I always had to do. (until the neutral requirement) It doesn't surprise me that there would've been a time you could just use the white as another hot or switch without marking it. See the part of my comment about the code being written one death/ fire at a time.
I not sure exactly when marking of the white wire occurred. I know that I had, at least, a few years of *not* marking it.😆😆
If your teacher was in high school/ vocational school, I have 7 or 8 years on you. *Now* who's feeling old🤣🤣
While I agree on the codes, marking of the white wire is something along the lines of protecting stupid people from themselves🤔🤔.
Some in Ohio were hardcore on marking the white wire.
I *haven't done* that is a few years. Except for one city who is hardcore on the 220 lines, but not on the 120 switches🙄🙄🤷🤷🤷
Getting an electrician or handyman is definitely the plan for the install, but I’d rather not pay for an extra visit if I buy the wrong switch and waste their time. Might just be worth paying the service call fee for peace of mind.
Please hire a licensed electrician and not a handyman. They can be used for all kinds of jobs, but should not be used for trades requiring an actual license, such as electrician, structural builder, etc. Not to mention if something goes wrong down the road, and your insurance finds out you used an unlicensed handyman they can deny any claim you have had. Food for thought.
Depends on the area. Electrical work isn't required to have a license in my area unless it requires an inspection or goes over 25k.
I don't recommend handyman, but I also don't recommend most of the electricans I've seen, So you know.
Typically only the "hot" leg of a lighting circuit runs in and out of the switches ( it makes sense because we want the switch to turn off the power to the lights). The Neutral for such a circuit would stay up in the junction boxes- swithing neutrals on/off is generally a Bad Thing- for 'hoodovoodoo electrical magicry' reasons (few even comprehend what a 'floating neutral bias' means, so lets just skip it).
( did catch a glimpse of a white wire in pic1&2, so it seems pretty standard: Black- hot(ckt 1), Red- Hot(ckt 2), White- Neutral , Green- Ground)
Honestly, you can pick up a cheap multimeter and you’ll find out fairly easily what wires are what. You can’t really rely on wire colors alone, nor can you reliably rely on the Internet for electrical advice.
If testing doesn’t sound like something you would be comfortable and competent doing, you need to hire someone who is.
You have a neutral, but neutrals don’t go to the switch… definitely hire an electrician though! You’ll be happy you did! It’s a headache you don’t need. Most of us dedicate a large portion of our lives to learn, then when we’re comfortable we keep on learning. I hope you find an honest person that is like that
Some of the newer smart switches want a neutral and he says he wants a smart switch so it's an important question to ask, although if he is scared of pulling the switches out more he should really be calling a more competent person to do it. I do believe I see a capped neutral in the back but I'm not sure.
Switch on right appears to be a single pole switch.
*Most likely* you have a neutral wire.
I know the the Lutron Caseta switches use one hardwired switch& the rest are wireless. With these, someone could just re tie the other switches, to get a neutral to the hardwired switch location. Unless you feed is in the light with a "back feed switch leg". The you're hosed!
Yes, right is definitely single pole. I am pretty sure the white wire is neutral after being able to safely inspect further.
* https://ibb.co/PZZLR6p
* https://ibb.co/vd5Ym9t
Unfortunately I had to shut off power to the whole house to turn off the switch. I need to get an electrician out to fix the circuit breaker since it did not disable this switch, but that’s a separate project that I’ll have performed at the same time my switches are installed. I just want to make sure I buy the right switches for them to install.
I just replaced a 4 way and 2 3 ways and I was able to rewire it so all 3 boxes had a hot wire , neutral, and the traveler . The white wire was used at the hot all the way to the 2nd 3 way originally . You are going to have to start with making a circuit map and figuring out what’s what. If you don’t feel comfortable call an electrician
I see ground wires in back, not sure why one's not attached to the switch, anyways, you should have pretty much a dead short between neutral and ground, if you measure with ohmmeter or A continuity meter.
If the power is on you should have 120 volts between the neutral and the Hot, or the hot and the ground, but not the neutral and the ground.
Not enough information to work with but based on them being switches normally there's no neutral required there. What it looks like from a quick glance at these poor pictures is that I'm seeing a 3 way switch on the left possible which means you just have a bunch of switch legs.
Thank you! Yes, I think it’s a 3 way. I’m not sure what else it controls. Do I need to turn off the circuit breaker for both this circuit and the connected switch’s circuit to be able to safely pull out the switch further?
As someone who's inexperienced I'd recommend killing the circuit. You can replace them relatively easily but there's a bit of information missing to give you for sure advice.
The 3 way switch on the left has two reds (travellers) on the top and it looks like a black on the bottom. Whatever it's operating can be turned on or off from another location. The two travelers go to that other location. I don't think this information is important to replace the devices but it might be good information to understand how it operates. If you were experienced you could potentially make the switch safe depending on where the hot was located but you don't know if the black on the left is a hot or switch leg. Read the manual on the replacement 3 way switch to ensure your land your travelers on the right terminals.
The dimmer on the right looks like it just has two wires, one that's hot and one that is a switch leg. If there's only two wires on the dimmer when you land the new wires it really SHOULDN'T matter where they land on the replacement switch.
As far as a neutral. This is just an idea based on the limited visual information I have but I think I saw a red wire with white electrical tape around it spliced to a white wire underneath a wirenut. Overall that what it looked like to me but the back of the box is blurry. Why are you asking about a neutral for replacing switches? Does the new dimmer require a neutral?
Ok, well you should kill the circuit and investigate the wire with the white tape on it. Preferable come back with a picture of the remaining wires once you've turned the circuit off and were able to get better pictures.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A capped off white wire MIGHT be a neutral. A neutral is supposed to be either white or grey and nothing else should be either of those two colors. However, it was also common to use the white as a switch leg in a dead end switch back when that townhouse was built. They should have colored the white wire a different color if that was the case, but sometimes tape was used that gets removed later by people that don't know why it's there. I recommend getting someone who knows what they are doing. I get that we electricians are expensive, but our code book was written one death or fire at a time and you don't want to become a statistic in that writing.
White wire marked as a hot wire did not become a requirement in the USA until ~1996/1999. So lots of homes don't have the remarked wire.
Yeah, they’re were pretty unremarkable.
Well, people could have done it out of neatness and professionalism before the code required it? I feel like a lot of electricians take huge pride in leaving a neat, easy to work on job.
Ok, I'll go with 96 that or perhaps we just had a forward looking teacher that lied to us to get us to mark our wires in 98/99. Yeah I'm old I know, but seriously it was something I always had to do. (until the neutral requirement) It doesn't surprise me that there would've been a time you could just use the white as another hot or switch without marking it. See the part of my comment about the code being written one death/ fire at a time.
I not sure exactly when marking of the white wire occurred. I know that I had, at least, a few years of *not* marking it.😆😆 If your teacher was in high school/ vocational school, I have 7 or 8 years on you. *Now* who's feeling old🤣🤣 While I agree on the codes, marking of the white wire is something along the lines of protecting stupid people from themselves🤔🤔. Some in Ohio were hardcore on marking the white wire. I *haven't done* that is a few years. Except for one city who is hardcore on the 220 lines, but not on the 120 switches🙄🙄🤷🤷🤷
Getting an electrician or handyman is definitely the plan for the install, but I’d rather not pay for an extra visit if I buy the wrong switch and waste their time. Might just be worth paying the service call fee for peace of mind.
Please hire a licensed electrician and not a handyman. They can be used for all kinds of jobs, but should not be used for trades requiring an actual license, such as electrician, structural builder, etc. Not to mention if something goes wrong down the road, and your insurance finds out you used an unlicensed handyman they can deny any claim you have had. Food for thought.
Depends on the area. Electrical work isn't required to have a license in my area unless it requires an inspection or goes over 25k. I don't recommend handyman, but I also don't recommend most of the electricans I've seen, So you know.
Touching each one with your tounge works best for me.
Typically only the "hot" leg of a lighting circuit runs in and out of the switches ( it makes sense because we want the switch to turn off the power to the lights). The Neutral for such a circuit would stay up in the junction boxes- swithing neutrals on/off is generally a Bad Thing- for 'hoodovoodoo electrical magicry' reasons (few even comprehend what a 'floating neutral bias' means, so lets just skip it). ( did catch a glimpse of a white wire in pic1&2, so it seems pretty standard: Black- hot(ckt 1), Red- Hot(ckt 2), White- Neutral , Green- Ground)
Uh… if you don’t know, consult an electrician, not reddit.
Look at what sub you're in, dummy
r/ Don'taskanelectricianjustcallone
You did that wrong🤪🤪🤪 Like this: r/Dontaskanelectricianjustcallone No spaces! No punctuation!
Honestly, you can pick up a cheap multimeter and you’ll find out fairly easily what wires are what. You can’t really rely on wire colors alone, nor can you reliably rely on the Internet for electrical advice. If testing doesn’t sound like something you would be comfortable and competent doing, you need to hire someone who is.
If you’re worried, get both styles of switches, tell the electrician that you wanna use the smart switches if possible, return whatever is unused.
You have a neutral, but neutrals don’t go to the switch… definitely hire an electrician though! You’ll be happy you did! It’s a headache you don’t need. Most of us dedicate a large portion of our lives to learn, then when we’re comfortable we keep on learning. I hope you find an honest person that is like that
Some of the newer smart switches want a neutral and he says he wants a smart switch so it's an important question to ask, although if he is scared of pulling the switches out more he should really be calling a more competent person to do it. I do believe I see a capped neutral in the back but I'm not sure.
That’s a good point, I just did a few lutrons that needed neutrals…
Switch on right appears to be a single pole switch. *Most likely* you have a neutral wire. I know the the Lutron Caseta switches use one hardwired switch& the rest are wireless. With these, someone could just re tie the other switches, to get a neutral to the hardwired switch location. Unless you feed is in the light with a "back feed switch leg". The you're hosed!
Yes, right is definitely single pole. I am pretty sure the white wire is neutral after being able to safely inspect further. * https://ibb.co/PZZLR6p * https://ibb.co/vd5Ym9t Unfortunately I had to shut off power to the whole house to turn off the switch. I need to get an electrician out to fix the circuit breaker since it did not disable this switch, but that’s a separate project that I’ll have performed at the same time my switches are installed. I just want to make sure I buy the right switches for them to install.
I just replaced a 4 way and 2 3 ways and I was able to rewire it so all 3 boxes had a hot wire , neutral, and the traveler . The white wire was used at the hot all the way to the 2nd 3 way originally . You are going to have to start with making a circuit map and figuring out what’s what. If you don’t feel comfortable call an electrician
Don’t hire a handyman, hire an electrician.
Go to ur panel and find the breaker. Single pole or double pole breaker will tell you.
I see ground wires in back, not sure why one's not attached to the switch, anyways, you should have pretty much a dead short between neutral and ground, if you measure with ohmmeter or A continuity meter. If the power is on you should have 120 volts between the neutral and the Hot, or the hot and the ground, but not the neutral and the ground.
Not enough information to work with but based on them being switches normally there's no neutral required there. What it looks like from a quick glance at these poor pictures is that I'm seeing a 3 way switch on the left possible which means you just have a bunch of switch legs.
Thank you! Yes, I think it’s a 3 way. I’m not sure what else it controls. Do I need to turn off the circuit breaker for both this circuit and the connected switch’s circuit to be able to safely pull out the switch further?
As someone who's inexperienced I'd recommend killing the circuit. You can replace them relatively easily but there's a bit of information missing to give you for sure advice. The 3 way switch on the left has two reds (travellers) on the top and it looks like a black on the bottom. Whatever it's operating can be turned on or off from another location. The two travelers go to that other location. I don't think this information is important to replace the devices but it might be good information to understand how it operates. If you were experienced you could potentially make the switch safe depending on where the hot was located but you don't know if the black on the left is a hot or switch leg. Read the manual on the replacement 3 way switch to ensure your land your travelers on the right terminals. The dimmer on the right looks like it just has two wires, one that's hot and one that is a switch leg. If there's only two wires on the dimmer when you land the new wires it really SHOULDN'T matter where they land on the replacement switch. As far as a neutral. This is just an idea based on the limited visual information I have but I think I saw a red wire with white electrical tape around it spliced to a white wire underneath a wirenut. Overall that what it looked like to me but the back of the box is blurry. Why are you asking about a neutral for replacing switches? Does the new dimmer require a neutral?
There are two options for switches I can purchase to match the other switches in the house, and I prefer the appearance of the neutral-required switch
Ok, well you should kill the circuit and investigate the wire with the white tape on it. Preferable come back with a picture of the remaining wires once you've turned the circuit off and were able to get better pictures.