I am wiring up Gen2 dimmers and on/off switches in a newer house wired with standard 3 conductor romex (live/neutral/ground).
The ground wire isn’t indicated in the wiring diagrams. But the dimmer has a green screw suggesting it can be grounded.
What did you do? Did you just connect the ground to the fixture, bypassing the switch? Did you ground the switch? Any idea why the ground is left off the wiring diagrams? Is there any downside to connecting the ground to both the switch and the fixture it controls?
Utilize the ground. It’s there for safety reasons and should also be connected to switches and end devices. Yes, there are some older switches that didn’t support earth ground, but newer ones do have it and should be used.
I believe they weren’t captured in the drawings because it would add more lines to the drawings and “crowd” the important Wires shown. I think there’s a note saying ground not shown but should be connected.
The ground you are referring to is the equipment ground or safety ground. In new construction it is likely a bare wire.
The equipment ground should be connected to the Green screw on the dimmer and similarly the green screw or bare wire on the fixture (if it is metal).
The reason it is not shown on the diagrams is the equipment ground goes to everything and would needlessly obfuscate the functional wiring. In addition, some older houses have no bare wire for equipment ground but use the metal box as a safety Ground. You likely have a blue or gray plastic box.
It would probably be a good idea to address these conditions in some sort of note.
The electrician here told me they never connect the ground to the outlet itself. The reason is because all our box are metal and are grounded. So when screwing the outlet to the box, the box become grounded. He would only connect the ground in a plastic box.
The part where he is worried, is the fact the Inovelli metal frame is painted black, which might reduce it conductivity to use the frame of the light switch as the ground source… I haven’t seen any details about this so far.
That coating is not conductive. So he is correct that the switch won’t self-ground. However, you can remove that coating with a dremel or other roto-tool. It will take about a minute.
Also, unless there is something weird in Canada, there shouldn’t be any reason you can’t physically ground the switch if you don’t want to grind the coating. The “never do it” is probably they usually don’t do it because the devices self-ground. At least in the US, we simply ground the switch with a pigtail. The metal box will have a screw hole. Insert a grounding (green) screw and attach a length of bare copper. I can’t imagine how this would be against code, but I don’t know the CA code. Pigtailing a ground should take about 2 minutes. (And this is exactly how it’s done if you have to use a plastic spacer on a metal box.)
TBH, grinding off the coating ought to get it. Either way, no reason not the by Inovelli because of the coating.
If the switch is in a METAL enclosure, and the ground wires are attached to the enclosure with a screw, the switch is grounded. Yes the switch is painted- but the inside of the screw holes will make enough contact to give a ground. If you want to test this, get a multimeter in continuity mode, with one probe scratch the paint a little, with the other probe touch the metal box. You can also hook up the ground wire- there’s no harm in doing it.
If the switch is in a PLASTIC enclosure, obviously no grounding happens through the screws. In a plastic enclosure, you must connect the grounding screw.
While the switch will ground on the screw, since the mounting hole is larger than the screw diameter, it is possible to mount the switch where you would not have contact between the screw and the conductive surface of the switch, hence no ground. So to insure a proper ground, scrape or grind off the coating or use a pigtail.
In my plastic box that has now 4 dumb switches, all ground wires are connected together. Do I remove the one ground wire that corresponds to the load of the inivelli switch and connect it to the inovelli box ground screw or I connect a new wire from the switch ground screw to the bundle.
Of course I prefer the former to avoid too many wires in the plastic box.
I didn’t completely follow your first option. But if you are removing a dumb switch and replacing it with an Inovelli switch, remove the ground wire from the dumb switch and connect it to the ground terminal on the Inovelli that is going in its place.
This seems silly to ask, but I assume this is still the case with the 2-1 generation? I’m in Chicago so everything is in metal pipe and metal boxes, so that is our ground. I didn’t mess with the grounding screw, as every receptacle or switch grounds via attaching it to the box with the metal screw. Does this mean none of my Inovellia Red 2-1 or aux switches are grounded?
No change from the previous generation. I have found that with a brand new switch, there is no continuity between the screw and the grounding screw. However, all you need to do is scrape the paint away from around the screw hole on the yoke so that the screw will contact bare metal.
If the yoke will contact the metal box when installed, you can also scrape a bit of paint from the yoke in that area. If you do that, remove the small plastic screw retainer before installing.
You’d have to test to determine that. Using a meter in the continuity mode, put your probes on bare metal on the yoke and the metal box to see if there is continuity.
I have found that as the screw is worked in the hole it may make contact with the bare metal of the yoke. But out of the box that doesn’t happen. If it were me, I’d want more contact than that.
None of the ground wires are connected to the dumb switches I am replacing. All the ground wires are connected together using a wire connector. So when I say “I remove the ground wire”, I mean remove it from the wire connector and connect it to the smart switch. At this point it does not connect with the other wires any more. Is this OK or is important for the all the ground wire to connect to each other?
You need all of the ground wires to stay connected to each other. In this situation, adding a ground wire from the switch to the bundle is the correct way to do it.
Since there will be 4 innovelli switches at the box (let’s say A,B,C,D) connecting the ground of A to the ground of B to the ground of C to the ground if D which then connects to the wire connector where all the ground wires come would be equivalent, correct?
Yes, it would mostly be. Thea switches do have two holes for wires at the ground terminal. A couple of things to keep in mind if you do it that way:
It’s slightly less safe. If a switch in the middle was disconnected from ground, the switches after it would also be disconnected from ground (rather than just the one switch).
It may not be acceptable by your local electrical code authority.
When possible, I try to run every switch directly to the ground bundle itself. But if it’s not possible, your approach is much better than not having a ground.
While I have your attention, on a similar question regarding other wires coming to the box:
How about the neutral wires, they are also bundled together and not used with the dumb switches. With the smart switches can I connect A to B to C to D to the neutral bundle or there is preference to run each white provided wire from the smart switch to the bundle?
How about the common line wire. Can I connect A to B to C to D to the common wires connector? (This is less of an issue because they are used with the dumb switches and wires already exist that I can reuse without unbundling the wire connector.)
No issues with either of those. The switches have two holes for wires for the line and the neutral connectors so feel free to jump from one to the next to make it easier within the box.
