Wiring – What’s the best way to add a neutral wire for smart switch

wiring

I know this has come up before and I have done a quite a bit of reading around stealing a neutral from another circuit, and I understand why this is bad.

So, here is my situation:

I want to add a zwave switch to my front driveway lights. The house was built in 2005 and the electricians have a 3 gang unit for the entry, garage and foyer lights. On another circuit in a single gang is the switch for the driveway lights. I have a neutral into the 3 gang, but it looks like they tried to save money or take the easy route as the single gang for the driveway is switch loop with no earth or neutral.

So, how do I get a neutral there? The driveway lights are about 300ft away and the circuit box is about 25 feet away. What would an electrician typically do in this case to add the neutral? Run it from the circuit, or from the fixtures 300ft away. Either one seems like it would be expensive.

Thoughts?

Best Answer

If you're going to run a neutral after the fact, you'll pretty much have to trace out the circuit, and run a new wire / cable. This could be a real project.

As mentioned in another answer and the comments, you could put the wireless switch in the circuit somewhere ahead of the lights where the neutral is present, and just splice the wires from the driveway switch. There are battery-powered switches such as the Lutron Pico that you can install in a cover plate - you could mount that in the driveway switchbox, and things would operate as they always have, along with other wireless control.

Of course Lutron makes some Caseta wireless switches that do not require a neutral. They "bootleg" their neutral return on the ground wire, which is generally verboten, but UL allows it for the tiny currents these devices draw.