I finally had a chance to install one of the aux switches i bought. I went from a dumb 3-way to aux. I followed the wiring here, i’ve included both the old and new. the aux switch turned the light on once, then the second time it killed the switch. i opened it and its toast.
@/u/eric_inovelli any ideas what happend?
I’m guessing you don’t, but do you have any pictures of how the aux and the switch were wired before you tucked them back into the box? There are a couple possibilities here. One is the mis-wiring, the other is some issue with the aux. It’s a little tough too rule out your wiring if we cannot see how you did it. I can understand, though that you wouldn’t necessarily have taken pictures because you would not have expected this to have happened.
Is it possible that the white wire that was attached to “load” wasn’t removed and connected to “neutral”? That is the first thing I can think of.
Looks really similar to: Did my new White Aux switch just kill my Red Dimmer?
Difference being dimmer v.s on off and which components seen to have failed. May not be related, but possibly worth exploring.
Sorry I didn’t take before pictures.
I also swapped 2 more aux switches. One dimmer and one on/off they both worked perfectly.
I disconnect the dumb switch. Rewired the smart switch side, then wired the aux switch.
I don’t know what happened to this one. As the other 2 worked. The other on/off had the exact same wiring.
I know that the wiring was correct. It may be possible that the traveller shorted with the neutral wire.
I’m not sure if that would cause this issue or not. But it’s the only thing I can think of.
Eric(s) is there any possibility that you have a red switch kicking around (either on/off or dimmer)? I’m willing to pay for it.
Got my replacement, the other day. And it works perfectly.
Thank you Eric and Courtney.
