3-way switch issue


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Old 10-24-18, 01:00 PM
J
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3-way switch issue

I have a light in my dining room that's controlled by two switches, one in the dining room and one in the kitchen. The kitchen switch is a 3-way toggle and the dining room is a switch/dimmer combination. The dimmer rheostat stopped working, so I decided to replace it with a 3-way toggle.

I have 4 wires coming out from the box: two gray, one pink, and one bare. The two gray are hot, pink seems to be the neutral, and the bare is the ground. Per the toggle switch instructions, I hooked the hot wires to the opposite two screws at one end of the switch, the pink wire to the common screw at the other end, and the bare wire to the ground.

The new dining room toggle works but there's an issue: the toggle in the kitchen has to be on for the dining room toggle to work. With that kitchen toggle on, the dining room toggle works as I expect it would. With the kitchen toggle off, the dining room switch will NOT turn the light on. It's like all the power to the dining room toggle is running through the kitchen toggle. What am I doing wrong ??
 
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Old 10-24-18, 01:47 PM
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You transposed the wire from the common terminal with one of the travelers. What wire was on the common from the dimmer? It needs to go on the odd colored screw.
 
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Old 10-24-18, 03:35 PM
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The wires on the dimmer weren't marked. There were just 4 wires sticking out the back connected by plastic nuts.
 
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Old 10-24-18, 04:15 PM
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two gray, one pink, and one bare.
Ok.... first off..... the common wire will not be pink.

One way to do it is to put pink on one of the brass traveler screws and just connect the grays either way. If it works.... leave it. If it doesn't work correctly..... reverse the two gray wires.

The other way to do it is.... the pink and gray will go into one conduit and the common gray will go into another conduit.
 
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Old 10-24-18, 06:46 PM
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Thank you for replying. The reason I think the pink is the common is from a voltage test. I have a simply voltage tester with two probes that lights up when it finds voltage. I checked between one gray wire and the pink wire and it lit up. I did the same thing with the other gray to pink and it lit up. Putting it between the two grays and it did NOT light up. So it seemed that the pink was the neutral and the two grays were the power.
 
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Old 10-24-18, 06:56 PM
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There is no neutral on a three way switch. You are measuring a series load.... the light inline.
Follow what I posted.
 
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Old 11-02-18, 08:40 AM
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You have the wrong wire on the common screw. If you made no other changes to the other switch this will be simple. Put one of the other wires on the common screw(not the bare ground). Try the switches. If it doesn't work then put the last wire on the common screw. It will work.
 
 

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