We have 4 ceiling fans with lights, each in their own room that are currently only controlled by pulling the chain. Each of these rooms has a traditional light switch (load/line, no neutral) that are connected to a single wall outlet. We have an older home, so I believe the outlet was meant for a lamp.
We also have a Smartthings hub connected to several other devices in our home.
If I were to replace the each of the traditional light switches with the Innovelli Fan/Light switch and add the RF controller to each fan, would we be able to control the fan and light in each room? We have no intentions of utilizing the wall outlet and would rather not pay an electrician to swap the functionality of each of these switches.
Has anyone used these switches in this manner? Essentially installing or replacing a fan/light switch in an effort to control a fan (not wired directly to a switch).
We want to be confident that this will work for our situation before purchasing.
Regarding the neutral wire being required in the switch box, we have another GE Z-wave dimmer switch installed at another location in our basement, which also states that a neutral is required. That one works just fine without the use of a neutral wire.
Are there any workarounds for no neutral wire/only having 2 wires going to the switch?
Not that I am aware of short of having an electrician fix that up for you. There had been some talk of a non-neutral V2 of the switch but there hasn’t been any recent discussion about it.
The complete alternative(non-Inovelli though which is sad) is to get an RF/battery operated remote and a Bond hub(or replace the fan with one that has Bond built in which I feel like is still inferior to Inovelli… but better than the hub approach as far as consistency of control is concerned).
You could rewire the outlet (that goes to the switch) to send neutral over to the switch box for the Inovelli switch (not really a switch, but the control head). The outlet will have neutral, so you would just rewire the BLK to LINE (at outlet) and WHT to NEUTRAL (at outlet), then you have a complete line/neutral setup at the switch.
@dvanderb I’m definitely looking for a solution that is integrated into the wall and looks like a normal switch, so the Bond solution isn’t ideal.
@harjms I’ll have to take a look at how the outlet is wired up. This could be a good workaround if what you described is possible! I’ll report back with some photos.