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Three-way switches. That's what we're talking about, wiring three-way switches. Hi, I'm Tim Carter, and first I want to let you know a little safety note
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We're working with high voltage electric, the same thing that you have in your own home
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Whenever you work with electricity, make sure it's turned off. I don't want you to get electrocuted
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Three-way switches can be found in many homes and they're very useful
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They allow you to control a light or maybe several lights from two different locations
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But the problem is they look a lot different than a regular switch
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A three-way switch has got three screws, count them, one, two, and three, plus the green grounding screw
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But this black screw right here, that's the really important one that we need to pay attention to
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A regular single pole switch has just got two screws on it and the green grounding screw
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You can see how it very different from a three switch That where the trouble begins That third wire can cause three switches not to work properly if you put the wires on the wrong screws I built this little
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demonstration of three-way switches in my garden shed so you can see how they work. You'll never
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find two three-way switches this close together in real life, but here's how they work. Look down
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here, you'll find this yellow wire. This is where the power comes into the first three-way
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switch. Now notice there's a white wire that's a little thicker that leaves this
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switch goes over and drops down into the second switch box. And look what happens
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Out of that switch box is another yellow wire that goes up and feeds the light. That's
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the basic wiring diagram and the most simplistic way to wire a three-way switch
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Now let me show you the types of wire that we use to do that. Here are the two
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wires that I'm using today to wire these three-way switches. This is a very common cable
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that you'll find in your home. It's got three conductors in it. The white wire is the neutral
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The black wire is the hot wire, and of course the bare copper is the ground. But look at this one
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This has four conductors It got the black white bare copper but this extra red wire This comes in really handy when you working with three switches We going to take the switches apart right now so I can show you how all of these wires work together to make the lights go on and off
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Oh, look at this jumble of wires in here. I know you're confused, but look how simple this really is
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Remember, this yellow wire has got a black wire, which is the hot
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That's the one that's coming from your service panel. It's got a white wire that's the neutral
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And of course it's got the bare copper wire. And this white wire had the same three wires, plus it had a red wire
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Now look how they all actually hook up. The white wires, the neutral wires, they need to just be wire nutted together because that's
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sending the neutral directly up to the light bulb. That's what you wanted to do
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The only wires that need to connect to the three-way switch are the black wires and that red wire
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Now the ground wire, same thing. The ground wires are just twisted together and of course one of the wires attaches to the ground screw on the actual three-way switch
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That means now we only left with three wires Now look at this Here is that black screw on the three switch I was telling you about and this black wire actually is the hot wire that comes from the
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circuit breaker panel. It connects to the black screw and the black and red wire that are
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in this white wire that goes between the two three-way switches. You can hook them to either
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one of the brass screws on the three-way switch. It doesn't make any difference at all. Now let's go
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look at the other switch so we can see how that one's wired. Okay, here's the second three-way switch
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I'm going to pull it apart and I'm going to show you the wires in this one and you're going
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to find out something very amazing. It looks identical to the first three-way switch
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Check this out. Here are the two black wires and the red wire and of course the grounding wires and then
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back in here are the other two. two neutrals that were wire nutted together
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So what's happening? We've got power that's eventually going to come in through this white wire and it's going
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to come into either the red wire or the black wire and then it's going to leave the
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top of the switch through this black wire, which is
