So when I built my house I. 2007, my electrian installed this switch. I have installed a GE switch to control my outside lights at my door, but the horizontal switches is my problem. The top one controls my upstairs lights (which has two more switches upstairs) and the bottom switch controls my main floor hallway light( which has another switch at the other end of the hall).
Obviously, I do not have the space for two GE switches here but can I somehow just remove the dumb switches and get just a switch plate that is solid to cover it up. Then use the other switches, which I can add GE switches and throw in some motion sensors.
I am not sure if this location is the main or the slave site.
You’ll need to look around for a switch plate that would work with the third switch next to the stacked pair, but there is a Leviton Z wave device which has two horizontal switches and should work.
Thanks for sharing this. I think it can work. So do you see a problem with me having this switch in this location and GE switch in the other locations? If that will work, I would need to figure out which type (master or add on) right?
Sorry, I thought they were all operating different lights.
If you want to set up a three-way with either of the horizontal switches, it’s going to get extremely complicated.
You can’t mix GE as either master or add on with any other brand because they are wired differently. They use physical traveler wires.
The Leviton switch does a virtual three-way, no traveler wires. There are two different ways to set it up as a virtual, and the easiest would just be to have smartthings do the work so that the auxiliary switch talks to the hub and then The hub talks to The master.
In that set up, they don’t even need to be on the same circuit. And the auxiliary is set up so that it does not control the load, so you can use any brand which is recognized by smartthings as an independent device. ( The GE add-ons don’t even have a radio in them, so they are invisible to SmartThings.)
All of that said, it comes down to the exact details of the wiring, and I leave that to the community’s electrical experts like @Navat604 and others.
(I’m happy to talk about the engineering specifications of the devices themselves, or some of the network protocol issues, but I don’t comment on individual wiring as I rely on text Reader software and I can’t be certain of getting all the details right.)
You could blank out one switch or both. Or you could blank one switch and use the space for another z-wave switch. The only thing stopping you is… . It’s all depend on your wiring configurations. If your neutral is at the light fixture. Then you are out of luck with GE but you could go with In wall micro relay modules and still be able to use the existing switches. So try figuring out your wiring first then draw out on how you are going to wire the switches. Also take pictures for reference and backup. Here’s a good site to reference your wiring to.
