I have been looking and looking, and I have found that the Inovelli Red and Blue series are no natural switches. However, they require a neutral for a dumb switch or their $22 aux switch. Does anyone know of another dimmer that does not need a neutral wire?
A little background:
I am migrating our church's lighting to Hubitat and smart switches. All of our switch boxes are drop legs, where the power comes from the junction box above, and the only wires in the box are the load and line. The boxes are metal and, unfortunately, have an MC conduit, and our electrician said that he could not add a neutral without running a new conduit and another wire. He did mention that we could ground to the box, and use that as our neutral. I am not sure how I feel about that one.
No, you should never use a ground wire as a neutral .
Yes, the ground wire will function as a neutral wire and the ground wire and neutral wire are bonded together in most cases at the panelboard.
But Not a good idea and probably against code.
Also .. ZigBee and z-wave both really hate being in a metal box
Unless you have an unbelievable. crazy good. network for both or either.
It's likely you'll have a lot of problems. having the switches communicate correctly.
( ask me how I know ) Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of suggestions other than maybe not to do it.
I'm not sure how wifi switches. would work in a metal box either.
Never tried it Maybe somebody can give you some info on that subject.
You can also consider Caseta by Lutron, I have metal boxes and they work great. Keep in mind you will need a Lutron Caseta Smart Bridge Pro to use with Hubitat.
Lutron Caseta would fit this perfectly. Dimmer or switch without neutral and a pico to match for a 3 ways. The cost will be a little more but reliability is very high.
