A question about three-ways.

Tater Cole · 2011-02-23T18:32:21+00:00

I'm pretty good at setting up high-tech gear and heavy industrialequipment. However, when it comes to standard home repair projects, Iam absolutely worthless, bordering on dangerous. I have no good excusefor why I didn't pay attention when my dad fixed things around thehouse.We had some remodeling work done and a light switch got broken in ourlaundry room. I was asked to replace this switch. After a few weeks, alittle box with a new switch appeared on my home office table. Acouple of weekends later, I tackled this project.In our laundry room, there are two light switches controlling onelight. For this reason, I should have installed a three-way switch. Ididn't do this. I installed a light switch that is for an area whereone switch controls one light. The small upside to this embarrassmentis that I wasn't the one that bought the wrong light switch.I am going to go get a three-way switch this weekend and install that,and make it so these lights work correctly.But, if I recall correctly, when I was installing the wrong type ofswitch, there was no 'traveler wire' that makes the magic happen. WhenI pulled the wires out of the old switch, there were two black wiresand one white wire (ground). (I'm pretty sure about this, but Ihaven't opened up the light switch to confirm it yet.)My question is, are there three-way light switches that do not requirethe traveler wire? Or, am I probably just missing it. Or, is thatwhite wire the traveler, and not the ground wire?Thanks for any helpful information.

Feb 23, 2011 20 Replies

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mm 15 years ago

Also if they were installed by an electrician. See my post just before yours. :)

Less likely, I'll admit.

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A question about three-ways.

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