Keypadlinc's shorting out

[oberkc]

As far as checking the resistance between the wall switch hot and breaker, I have no problems trying this but how can I measure this when the distance between the two locations is about 50+ feet away?

 

Sometimes you have to get creative. I have not needed to do this often, but I have sometimes tied hot and neutral together (obviously, no power) at at one termination point (box or panel) and measured resistance between hot and neutral conductors at the other end. Other times, I might add a length of conductor between one location and another so that I could reach both ends with the probes.

 

Also, I think I remember why the reason for the yellow wire. It is actually only on Insteon devices around the house since the switches are completely separate from any electrical outlet and the outlets have the normal red/black color scheme.

 

Yes! Nice. Yellow identifies the circuit(s) powering only insteon switches. No lights. No refrigerators. I would imagine that you could even power a whole house' worth of unloaded insteon switches from a single circuit breaker. Yellow, then, becomes partly a control circuit.

 

Sometimes, even electricians have good ideas.

[Zick]

As far as checking the resistance between the wall switch hot and breaker, I have no problems trying this but how can I measure this when the distance between the two locations is about 50+ feet away?

 

Sometimes you have to get creative. I have not needed to do this often, but I have sometimes tied hot and neutral together (obviously, no power) at at one termination point (box or panel) and measured resistance between hot and neutral conductors at the other end. Other times, I might add a length of conductor between one location and another so that I could reach both ends with the probes.

 

Also, I think I remember why the reason for the yellow wire. It is actually only on Insteon devices around the house since the switches are completely separate from any electrical outlet and the outlets have the normal red/black color scheme.

 

Yes! Nice. Yellow identifies the circuit(s) powering only insteon switches. No lights. No refrigerators. I would imagine that you could even power a whole house' worth of unloaded insteon switches from a single circuit breaker. Yellow, then, becomes partly a control circuit.

 

Sometimes, even electricians have good ideas.

 

Thank you for that idea of tying the wires together. It's seems so obvious now, which is why I probably didn't think of it.

[Zick]

Depending on how much work you want to put into this, and how comfortable you are with electrical, one option is to measure resistance between the switch location hot, and the circuit breaker. If possible, measure this resistance while moving the branch connector. My experience is that this resistance will be well below 1 ohm. Heed LeeGs advice here with regards to being careful.

 

When I did this test, I got .6 ohms.

[oberkc]

When I did this test, I got .6 ohms.

 

Do you have a helper? Did you test this while moving the connection where the circuit branches out to see if there were any signs of dicontinuity?

 

Otherwise, this looks good. Solder at that branch connection may still help, but there is nothing in that measurement which one could take as positive indication of a bad connection. Neutrals are all home-runs to the ground bar. Connections are tight. Wiring appears proper. No load on the switch. There is not much else under your control that it could be.

 

Personally, I am running out of ideas here.

[Zick]

Yup, had wife move branch connection around and didn't see any change.

Going to solder up the connections and call it good.

 

It's been about 3 days with the other keypadlinc in place and no sign of fault yet.

[oberkc]

Going to solder up the connections and call it good.

 

That's what I would do.

[gatchel]

I would confirm the latest NEC codes with regards to soldering connections on 120v circuits.

NEC 110.14 B says that you have to mechanically connect them first before soldering.