Just starting with my smart home setup. Installed the Smart Things hub and a couple multipurpose sensors. Next up was smart switches, which are the GE 14292 models. I purchased three, but didn’t even get through the first install.
I was trying to replace a switch that controls a single exterior incandescent light. The existing dumb switch had a ground wire and two black wires.
I wired in the new smart switch with the ground, and both black wires (one line, one load)…then I pigtailed into a capped set of white wires in the three-gang box to run a white wire to the smart switch’s neutral terminal. Screwed in the smart switch and turned the battery on. It worked…for a second before tripping the breaker. Down at the electrical panel, as soon as I turned the breaker off and back on, it tripped again.
I was on a time crunch and so I wired the dumb switch back up and it works again.
Any ideas? I used the jumper wire that came with the switch…is it possible that’s the problem?
I had this issue with two different switch installs that I did. In once case it was a ganged box with three switches. It had two sets of neutrals in the box. When I connected it I assumed it would not matter which set of neutrals I used. Apparently that was wrong, because it would trip the breaker the second I flipped it on. I couldn’t see that I had wired anything incorrectly so I switched to the other bundle of neutrals and it worked.
In the second case the switch was in a bedroom and it was tied to an ARC Fault breaker. In this case it would not trip immediately it would randomly happen depending on which order I turned on lights and used outlets. I again could not see that I wired anything incorrectly. The ARC Fault breaker was about 12 years old so I decided to swap it out and that seemed to have fixed it. It hasn’t tripped again.
Carefully, exercising extreme caution to make sure you do not get shocked, check it with a meter and make sure that white is actually a neutral wire. Sometimes, they are power or load.
It should read 110VAC (in the US) to hot and 0ohms of resistance to neutral or ground.
If it reads 240VAC between it and hot, you have a hot on a different phase. If it reads 0, you have a hot from the same phase as your hot wire.