I’m going to assume the A box is original and the B & C boxes are/were added later.
The A box is a metal box that is usually used for armor jacketed cable, however the wire clamp is for using Romex in this box. Point being normally the box itself would be the safety ground.
Now… the A box wiring is illegal. There are no premade cables with two blacks. One could bastard up a mx cable shield but I’ll assume that is not the case here.
Having said all that:
Can you peek in the small space above the A box and see what the wire might be?
Is the path of this cable possibly visible (i.e. in the basement or attic).
From what I can see it is definitely not legal. Whoever did this is either lazy or stupid (as opposed to ignorant). Sorry for the mini-rant but its not that hard to do it right so it really irks me when I see someone like yourself having to deal with it down the road.
@JohnRob Thanks for chiming in! Having to edit this post as I’ve reached my new user 15 post limit. All boxes appear to be original. B & C are both “new construction” type boxes.
I just tried peaking behind A and removed the back screw clamp. Although hard to see anything, there were no signs of Romex or grounding. There is no good visibility. I even pulled out the nearest switch to see if a line was being pulled from it, but it appeared to not to be the case…
I agree with your rant
Brandon @harjms Yes, it appears to be right. And yes, one light. It is a track light.
UPDATE: Possible solution I believe will work or make it work to get around this odd wiring. Move the red traveler at C to join the neutral. This will in turn provide neutral back to A (thru B). I can then run Inovelli switches as remotes at A and B using line and neutral. Just means I have to buy more switches @harjms@Bry@JohnRob
@daytonalott The light junction box looks correct, but only one light inline? I’d expect another set of Romex to power up the next light unless this light is the end of the line.
Yes, I’ll have to leave a note in the box or something haha.
Thank you all for the responses and help trying to figure out this odd wiring. Was thinking I was going crazy but I guess this wiring configuration would only function properly in a dumb setup. I can at least control the lights at C with hot being legged over from A by traveler. I’ll get more inovellis and try to set them up as remotes at A and B by legging the neutrals back on the traveler.
The Inovelli dimmer showed up today and it is working how I wanted! It was a complicated setup to make work and took a lot of determination, but I am very pleased with how it turned out and how well it functions. These switches are incredible. In summary, what made it so hard was that in my 4-way wiring configuration, the hot line came in ONLY to box ‘A’ which had the hot and 2 traveler wires no ground or neutral (seriously - questionable wiring). It took some head scratching and an extension cord to an outlet providing a ground with multimeter to discover the 120V line in at box ‘A’ while all wires were disconnected at all boxes. To make things even more fun, the traveler wire colors here did not match the wires at 4-way switch box ‘B’. So, basically I used both traveler wires to exchange line and neutral to the necessary locations between box ‘A’ and ‘C’. At ‘C’ (location with the load to lights), the Z-wave dimmer switch commands the load with internal relay. At the other locations it uses switches with only line and the newly provided neutral. For switches ‘A’ and ‘B’ I disabled the internal relays and these act as a z-wave remotes to the source switch ‘C’. Note: the old wiring configuration worked fine in a dumb setup but the smart switch requires the constant hot and load.
