I am finishing exchanging more than 25 switches in my home with smart Lutron dimmers and Pico remotes (no neutral wiring needed). Some of them have been single pole, some 3-way (controlling both ceilings fans and light fixtures). Up until now all of the work has been fairly simple. Disconnect, identify hot vs load or travelers and reconnect the same way (except for the bundling of travelers together that the Lutron switches require and bundling of all cables that Pico remotes require). Nothing out of the ordinary.
I am in my last switch (3-way) and when I opened the box, I found something I didn’t expect: Two black wires connected to the two hot terminals in the switch (one screw and one push terminal) along with the two travelers (red and black) and the ground cable connected to the ground screw. Why would there be two hot wires connected to the two hot terminals in the switch like that?
The house was built in 2007. So, there are also neutrals bundled in the back of the box. I attached some pictures that might help visualize the situation better.
As you can see from the pictures one of the hot wires is coming from a Romex cable (along with neutral and a ground) and the other is coming from a different Romex (along with the travelers, neutral and ground).
I was thinking of placing the Pico remote here which calls for just bundling travelers and hot into a nut and capping the ground wire. Can I just bundle all these cables like that? I can also place the actual Lutron dimmer here which calls for attaching ground to ground, hot to one terminal and all other cables to the other terminal.
Any ideas or help would be appreciated.
Best Answer
It's simply a splice. They are using the screw and the backstab to accomplish what they could do with a pigtail. In particular, they are grabbing "always-hot" because this is the first switch. Presumably they are also grabbing neutral.
An ideal 3-way circuit:
What they are doing: (shown translucent)