Lzw31-sn single pole non neutral wired to 8 cans with compact florescent bulbs

I just installed the switch. It is pretty simple. The lights came on once briefly then nothing. I reset, reconfigured, still no light. Is this a load issue? Will I need a bypass in one can or all of them?

Do you have the switch or the dimmer? Which model?

The bypass is only used with the dimmer in a non-neutral configuration. How are you wired?

I have the dimmer. Black to load. White to line. Black is hot.

As @Bry mentioned, the neutral wire is the deciding vote. If you don’t have a neutral it’s sounds like you may the bypass. If you can swap one of the fluorescent bulbs with an incandescent, that should put you over the load minimum, if it works you definitely need the bypass.

I had some weird issues when trying to wire a couple non-neutral bypass dimmers that I posted about here Non-neutral LZW31-SN, Bypass fixed issues

As noted by @flipontheradio you need to get our bypass device to make this work on a non-neutral setup.

Is this a two-way? Sounds like you are wired incorrectly. If the have a hot and a neutral in the box then the black hot goes to line, the black to the light goes to load and the white is pigtailed to neutral. You have the white on line which for a two-way with power in the box isn’t correct.

If you don’t have a hot in the box then the power is coming from the light and you are wired ok. Add the bypass to one can.

I am not sure if you have it wired correctly. If black is hot, and white goes to the bulb (#1 in picture below), then black should go to line on the switch, and white should go to load.

In some older house wiring, the “hot” wire might go to the bulbs first. If you are trying to wire it up like #2, I am not sure if it will work.

You mentioned that the black wire is hot. Is it still hot if you remove one all of the bulbs?

Electrically both are exactly the same. The dimmer knows nothing about Line and Neutral. Because of the polarity changes on the AC line it becomes irrelevant.

HOWEVER as soon as a Neutral is connected to the dimmer then there is most definitely a difference between powering through the “LINE” connection and trying to power through the “LOAD” connection. Trying to power through the load connection is WRONG.

The crux of the issue is without a Neutral the Smart Dimmer needs to have some current going through the load at all times. This current is req’d to power the Z-Wave radio and control circuit. If the load is so small (low) it might not allow enough current to flow so the radio is inoperable or perhaps worse on the boarder of working / not working.

When a Neutral is connected to the dimmer it is able to provide the path for the radio power.

Sounds like I have 3 things to try. Put an incandescent bulb in one can to see if it is a load issue. Reverse the black and white wires to the switch. and add a bypass (I bought one in case I needed it). I will try each of these tomorrow. Quick question though, do I need 1 bypass or do I need 1 for each can?

Note: The whole objective is the automation once I get these working. The kitchen lights are on 4 different zones with switches in 4 locations and I want the automation to be able to turn them all on at once.

Just one . . 20 characters

This can definitely be done with associations depending on your hub. I have 3 zones in my kitchen and associated them to one switch. I think it gets a little tricky if you want all 4 switches to be the “master”, but having one “master” switch is doable.

@Bry is correct. You should look at is as on bypass per dimmer.