I had three regular wall switches which operate appliances in this order:
1 Ceiling can lights (replaced with z-wave dimmer switch).
2 Fan lighting
3 Fan on/off (replaced with z-wave fan controller)
At the gang box, there are two incoming (line) wire sets from the breaker and three outbound (load) wire sets. All 5 of the neutrals (white) were twisted and capped. Switch one had two wires connected at the line terminal (one from the breaker and the other jumpered to switch 2 (line). Whats odd is that switch 2 had three wires connected to the line terminal (jumper from switch 1, the other line from the breaker, and another jumper to switch 3).
The two new switches (at position 1 and 3) require neutrals to be connected, so I jumpered each neutral terminal to the other 5 (7 total). Other than that, I kept the same config and things seems to work but I'd like some validation I did it correctly.
It seems redundant that switches 2 and 3 are powered of two lines. Would this cause my ceiling lights (operated by new dimmer switch) to get less current or would everything still draw exactly the current it needs regardless?
Best Answer
If your house was wired by a human electrician then I seriously doubt that your gang box has two supply cables with their neutrals connected together. Surely what you think are two supply cables are actually one supply cable and one unswitched load branch leading to at least some of the outlets. All that jumper wire between the switches is how the hot node ultimately reaches the outlets.
If you are intensely curious you could experiment by disconnecting everything and using a contact meter to find which cable supplies power to the gang box. This is probably the only way you will ever obtain true faith in the fact that you don't have two power cables entering the box.
As for validation, you obviously have the box wired at least as correctly as the original electrician did.
Many electricians recommend using "pigtails" to connect the hot node to all the switches and loads, because then a single connection failure will cause only one load to lose power. However, unless you want to use your house as a laboratory to learn the electrician trade, there's no need to change something that's already working.