I've been steadily replacing switches in my house with zwave ones. The other day I opened this guy up and found a red wire wired to the top of the switch, a black wire at the bottom and another black wire wrapped around the bottom screw. I am pretty sure this is not a three way switch but it is sitting in a room with a ceiling fan and the fan does not have a switch of its own. Just a remote. So I suspect this red wire has something to do with the fan.
Now of course I could just wire the wave switch the same way with the addition of a neutral wire (the ge wave switch requires it) but I'd like to better understand what's going on here. I'm pretty new at switches so does anyone have any idea what's going on here?
Best Answer
You have a 2-way switch. One of the black wires is probably the line and the other carries power to some other device on the circuit; they are connected together by one using the backstab connector and the other the screw. The red wire is probably the load (it's also possible the red is the line and you have two loads controlled by the switch).