Wiring question

[ryarber]

A couple years ago, I bought an old house that is our vacation home. The house is several decades old, I'm thinking it was originally built around 50 years ago, but has been added onto a couple times. It's a great house but unfortunately, some of the wiring is dated. I'm not there to look at stuff right now, but I don't think it has a neutral wire in the box.

There is one room where two fixtures are on the same switch. At the moment, they're not controllable independantly. One of the fixtures is a fan light and the other is a regular fixture that we've put halogen bulbs in.

The question is this. I'd like to split them so that they are controlled independantly. Can I do this with insteon equipment? I was thinking of putting a fan control module on the fan light and doing a micro on/off (or dimmer) module in the base of the second fixture. But how would I control them? I could use the small remotes to control them, remove the switch and tie the hot wires together at the wall switch. Is that an option? Doing so, I'd lose the ability to control them with a wall switch, right? If there is a neutral wire, I guess I could do the same thing, but instead of eliminating the wall switch, I could put in a 6 button keypad right?

[atmarosi]

Micro module and FanLinc requires Neutral. 
 

you will need more wires to complete - but the rest would work….

Edited April 12, 2023 by atmarosi

[ryarber]

32 minutes ago, atmarosi said:

Micro module and FanLinc requires Neutral. 
 

you will need more wires to complete - but the rest would work….

I was assuming that if the neutral wire wasn't at the switch, there would still be one at the fixture. Is that not so? I'm not very familiar with how they wired these older houses.

[atmarosi]

Hard to say without looking at it. Sometimes they just make it a switch leg with just the hot coming to the switch…sometimes they bring it all to the switch. 

[oberkc]

5 hours ago, ryarber said:

I was assuming that if the neutral wire wasn't at the switch, there would still be one at the fixture. Is that not so?

This would be so.  The fixtures require neutral to operate.

 

7 hours ago, ryarber said:

But how would I control them? I could use the small remotes to control them, remove the switch and tie the hot wires together at the wall switch. Is that an option? Doing so, I'd lose the ability to control them with a wall switch, right? If there is a neutral wire, I guess I could do the same thing, but instead of eliminating the wall switch, I could put in a 6 button keypad right?

Yes, you could tie them together, but that would be unnecessary.  Hot and neutral would be at one of the fixture boxes.

Yes, you could put in a keypad or switch at the current location, but you would need to repurpose the conductors coming into the switch box.  This would be done at the applicable ceiling fixture box, and making one a hot and the other a neutral.

I believe you could make this work with existing wiring.

[MrBill]

20 hours ago, atmarosi said:

Hard to say without looking at it. Sometimes they just make it a switch leg with just the hot coming to the switch…sometimes they bring it all to the switch. 

There is a hot, switched hot and Neutral at the fixture, if the switch box only has a switch leg.   In fact by definition, there must be a neutral at the fixture.

[randyf]

6 hours ago, MrBill said:

There is a hot, switched hot and Neutral at the fixture, if the switch box only has a switch leg.   In fact by definition, there must be a neutral at the fixture.

FWIW, there doesn't *have* to be a neutral at the fixture (though common, I've certainly seen it where it's not), but there will be one hot and one neutral in some combination or both of the fixture and switch box (gotta make a path from hot to neutral somehow for the thing to work).  In one of the boxes, though, there could only be a 2 wire line that completes the hot/neutral connection.

However, if the intent here is to put a fanlinc and/or micro module at the fixture AND a switch remotely to control it, the spot with the 2 wires could be re-connected such that one wire is hot, the other neutral (may already be a taped off white/black wire) which can power the device at that location.  and the device at the other end will be powered by what is already there.  Pair the switch to the fanlinc/micro module, and it will work properly.  Further, the actual controlling switch doesn't need to be in the same place where it was, or even add another so it's multi-controlled (i.e. "three way").

If the 2-wire to one box is romex, it is likely already a white/black wire (as aforementioned, it could be taped off with black or red electrical tape).  If it is in a conduit, it could be two (or combination of) black/red wires, but it may also be possible to pull a white wire through the conduit.  Otherwise, make sure to tape off the wire that is neutral with white wire to indicate it is actually neutral.

[keepersg]

An alternative for wiring in a situation where the neutral is in the fixture and a switch leg runs to the box is to place a micromodule in the fixture and use the switch leg to wire the sensing circuit as shown.

[MrBill]

15 hours ago, randyf said:

FWIW, there doesn't *have* to be a neutral at the fixture (though common, I've certainly seen it where it's not),

A fixture must be connected to a hot wire, (which is usually switched) and a neutral in order to work.