Light not turning completely off

@milesstevenson

The symptoms are similar to that of a switch without a neutral connection. Perhaps you could measure from the neutral to the equipment ground (bare wire / green terminal).

John

Getting 0 there. I did measure also connected to a regular sylvania LED bulb and it is only measuring 0.1 - so something in the fan light is "pulling" that power. doesn't make sense to me, but I'm no electrician, either.

With the neutral being at 0 volts and the load being a 15 Volts I have to believe the Zooz is sending a small amount of current out the load terminal even with the switch off. This doesn't sound like a good design to me. I would think a resistor would work, and I've seen them offered on some automation website I can't recall. However I personally would not add a resistor unless there was no other option.

Perhaps the folks who made the fan could help? They might know a brand that works with their light.

John

In my opinion a switch (or even a dimmer for that matter), that includes a neutral connection should not behave this way, no matter the type of load connected, full point stop...

A switch with neutral wireing that's not compatable with every load type is ridiculous...

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I agree - don't understand it. I'm going to do some more testing with wiring trying to isolate the line from other items to make sure something else isn't interfering.

I agree with @mike.maxwell and Zooz should make this right, but if you don't get satisfaction, you may need to add one of these Aeotec Bypass units. They're intended to solve flicker issues, but they should put enough load on the light to solve the issue.

The item @SmartHomePrimer linked to is the "resistor" I was referring to. However I think it is more than a simple resistor. Likely a PTC resistor of some sort.

However if this were my issue, I would not install the Bypass, I would use those funds to purchase a switch that works with your LED light. Unless of course Zooz can remedy the situation.

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Assuming you measured voltage and not resistance, it may still be a bad neutral.

Can you turn off power at the breaker and measure the resistance between neutral and ground? It should typically be 5 ohms or less.

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Breaker off, getting 0.3 ohms between ground and neutral. Just to be sure, I unhooked everything, isolated just the light and switch (no wire nuts connecting other switches in the box) and tried again with same result. Cheap Sylvania led bulb works fine, fan light is partially lit on 15 volts. Still having some back and forth with zooz. Only other thing I can think of to try is hooking up the fan/light remote control module for just the light. Maybe that would introduce needed resistance.

Edit: I wired the fan and light directly since I planned to control them completely from HE, but maybe I'll need the controller after all. Fan works fine by the way on the GE fan controller switch.

OK, that rules out the neutral. And yours is not a 3-way connection so there's no traveler to deal with.

Can't think of anything else other than the switch itself. An on/off switch really should not have any dependency on the type of bulb. It should just work.

The exceptions would be no-neutral required switches. They need to have a connection back to hot, which is done through the bulb. However, that's not what's being discussed here, so I agree that there shouldn't be a voltage when the light switch is off. Unfortunately, I've heard that it's more common than would be expected.

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In all "switches" where the switching element is a semiconductor (as opposed to a relay), there will be some amount of "leakage" current through the switch even when off. Partially from the semiconductor itself and partly by any "snubber" the designer included for electrical noise reduction. The values for these components are a "design choice" for the device designers to choose with certain trade-offs for too much or too little.

If we assume the Zooz design has a higher leakage than other switches, a different brand of switch may be a solution.

However if you LED light is extremely sensitive to leakage current it could be more difficult than with other LED lamps.

I would temporary connect the LED light to the fan dimmer (disconnecting the fan) for a test of the ability of different designed switch to control this LED light.

I would go to Lowes and buy a GE zwave/zigbee switch and be done with it. My time is too valuable to tinker infinitely, though.

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Must be Zooz S2 models because I have a bunch of Zooz v2 and they use relays, not semiconductors as switching element. Honestly I would do the same as @JasonJoelOld, I would go to Lowes and get a GE.

Or get the other model zooz. I've never heard the same complaints on them.

Hopefully @milesstevenson solves his problem and he shares the resolution here :slight_smile:

So having a bit of back and forth with zooz support still. They are just asking several questions about what I've tried and verifying wiring. I did hook up the fan /light remote control unit on just the light instead of direct wire. Since it remembers the last state it was in, by putting it beween the switch and the light, using the remote to turn on the light, then the switch and HE can control it from there and I can just put the remote away. Doing that made everything work just fine! The control unit introduced the extra resistance needed apparently. This is still a hack and I think the switch should just be off, but it will work for now.

Also, in reference to just getting a different switch... I could, but I live in the middle of no where. Closest Lowes is an hour away and returning the switch to Amazon is a hassle, too, so it is worth my time to do some troubleshooting.

Remove the load from the zooz switch. Measure between the load wire and neutral. If there is still 15VAC. Then it's not a switch issue and most likely leakage from somewhere else or that LED light is way too sensitive to floating voltage.
If there is no 15VAC then it's a switch issue.

2.5V doing that test