Replacing Dimmers - Never seen this

6 years ago

I'll start off by saying that electrical is my lease proficient skill. I can reasonably figure most things out, but once it starts getting strange, like my current issue... I seek guidance.

I have a house built in the mid 80's, and I don't want the dimmers in my bathroom area. I've remodeled everything in the large bathroom, including tearing most of it down to the studs and redoing the plumbing and building a new shower. However, I never touched the dimmer switches because I didn't think it would be an issue.

Well, now that I've pulled them out of the gang, I'm a little lost at my next steps to replace them with standard switches. The gang has 4 cables of 14/3 coming in. All the neutral wires are connected by a twist cap. Two of the hot are twisted together, and the other two are connected to the dimmers. The two that are twisted together, have a single wire coming out to them from one dimmer, and both dimmers are also connected via black hot wire.

I have a picture below. You can see the dimmers are only using the hot wires. I need to understand how to turn this into two normal switches powering powering the lights above. One is a canned light directly above, and the other two paired are wall sconces on this same wall.

I'd like to not rip out the drywall to figure out where they go, but feel like I may have to. Any thoughts or at least an explanation on this strange setup?

Featured Answer

Seabornman

6 years ago

The neutral return path is at the fixture. The switches are merely an on/off for the hot wire that goes to the fixture and is sent to the switch for control. Yes, just wire the same way. A tester just complicates things.

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Comments (6)

mtvhike
6 years ago
I would assume the wire coming out of the box to both dimmers is the source (hot) wire. The other wire from each dimmer goes to each light fixture. If you don't have a tester (I recommend a contactless one), you should get one. To check my assumption, turn the power on and check each of the three black wires. The one in the middle (the source) should be on. The other two will be hot or not, depending on the setting of dimmer.

What style of switch are you planning to use? You might consider one which is a combination of a switch and a dimmer (these are made with both the toggle style and the Decora style). Or, just replace the dimmers with the new ones, wired just like the dimmers are wired. If there is a ground wire in the box (not the neutral), then the ground terminals of the switches should be connected to it (I hope you have room!). Be sure to use a green wire and a green wire nut.
Seabornman
6 years ago
I think you're overthinking it. Just substitute new switches for the dimmers, using the same wires. You should add a bare ground wire to each switch as the new switch will have a ground screw. That will be a little difficult if you tie in to existing grounds. You may need larger wire nut.
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Mark
Original Author
6 years ago
Is it ok to wire it the same way using normal switches? I was planning on matching the rest of the bathroom's switches with the standard Leviton decoras. Since non of the lights I replaced are meant to be dimmed, or have LED bulbs for dimming, I just need the on-off.

Again, excuse my ignorance, but I thought you needed neutral wires as a return path for the current. Would the return path be via the lights, since they are connected to the neutral wires (and those are all twisted together as shown in the picture), even though the switches are not? This seems like fire hazard waiting to happen?

In regards to a tester, I do have a multimeter that I use when doing any work around the house, and my thought was to see which wires were actually live in that setup, but thought I'd ask a taking any further action.

Thanks.
wdccruise
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Mark thanked wdccruise
Mark
Original Author
6 years ago
Thank you, guys. I was able to wire it like the dimmers, and I used wdccruise's picture for clarification on top/bottom wiring for the new switches.

Much appreciated!