Need help with light switch timer wiring puzzle

11 years ago

I just bought a new Honeywell electrical light switch timer, to replace a very old one that is in my garage, on the outdoor lights switch. I pulled out the old timer to look at the wiring setup, and here is what I have in the wall, currently hooked up.

1 black line hooked up to a black line.

1 red line hooked up to a red line

1 brown line hooked up to a brown line.

(All 3 above hooked into lines in the timer unit.) PLUS

1 white line INCOMING which is hooked to ANOTHER white line (OUTGOING?), so
goes in a loop to itself – not hooked into the timer at all.

1 ground wire (copper, bare) that is floating around in there, does not
seem to be hooked to anything. (As I recall, with standard light switches, I usually have the copper ground
wrap onto a screw in the back of the switch.)

The HONEYWELL unit has THREE wires attached to it....

1 blue wire (LOAD WIRE

1 black wire (LINE WIRE)

1 white wire (Neutral wire)

and asks you to hook up to the same, plus attach the ground.

SO...if I hook black to black, then I get stuck. White to which white line? (how do I figure which of the two currently twisted together lines is incoming and which is outgoing?) Red line and brown lines from supply hook up where on this timer? I can figure out the ground (bare copper) assuming there is a screw or something there.

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Comments (4)

Ron Natalie
11 years ago
Connect the white wire from the timer to the white wires in the box. This is the grounded (aka neutral) conductor. Some timers don't need this, some do. As for the black and blue, you'll have to identify which of the wires in your existing situation is the line and which is the load. Absent other clues, you can carefully turn on the power and measure the disconnected BLACK/RED lines to figure this out.

I'm confused as to your "brown" wires. Are you sure these just aren't very tarnished bare wires? If so, that's where the bare wire from the new timer gets connected.
Tish Chadwick
Original Author
11 years ago
NOPE, not a tarnished line. A copper wire which has a BROWN VINYL wrapping (or whatever that rubbery stuff is.) The bare copper wire is bare, visibly bare. The house was built in 1980, so we are looking at 40 year old wiring colors, which are different than the colors used in wiring in 2015. From what I have been able to find out, they used to use brown wiring for really heavy loads. Not sure why that would be there, however, the first owner of the house (from whom I bought the house) had a super heavy duty outlet put right outside the door, to run some sort of heavy duty equipment he had. That is a 225/250 volt outlet (covered). I have no idea if the switch is involved in supplying power to that thing. But that could be the extra brown wire that is in there.
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User
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
If the brown wire is hooked up to a switch, then it wouldn't go to the light AND receptacle. A picture would be helpful. Is this house wired in Romex, conduit, or armoured cable? Which wires come from which conduit or cable? Color is often irrelevant. You bought a single pole timer with a neutral connection to run the clock. It appears that the existing timer is a 3-way timer that must have a battery to run the timer and/or a small amount of unnoticeable current continues to run through the bulb filament when it is off to run the timer.

"1 white line INCOMING which is hooked to ANOTHER white line (OUTGOING?), so goes in a loop to itself – not hooked into the timer at all." Are you saying that both white wires go in and out the SAME conduit?
Tish Chadwick
Original Author
11 years ago
I will get a photo and post it later today because it is easier to follow with a photo...(the main switch turns off the electricity in several rooms so I need to first shut down the office equipment so not to have a later power surge issue...)