I am giving some thought to installing some illuminated switches in my house. For anybody here that has done that, how do you like them? Do you have any suggestions on brand or is one brand pretty much like another brand?
To prevent this from happening, any lighted switch you select should have 3 leads or screws: line, load, and neutral...
Yeah, that was it! Thanks for the reminder.To prevent this from happening, any lighted switch you select should have 3 leads or screws: line, load, and neutral. Having the neutral avoids having to pass (a small) current through the load to get to the neutral. Downside is that not every switch box will have a neutral available; I've needed to wire a neutral to several boxes so I could utilize X10 Pro switches which require the neutral.
Just to clarify for your safety, when I mentioned "line", "load", and "neutral", that in no way involves the "ground" wire (the bare wire). That is a 4th wire that should NEVER be used to carry current and should ONLY be connected to the box (if metal) and the ground screw of an outlet. If you have a switch that requires neutral (as the X10 Pro switches do), do NOT connect the ground wire in the box to that wire or screw! That must be connected to a true neutral (which may or may not be present in the switch box as a pair of white wires connected with a wire nut.) If you don't know exactly what you're doing, have an electrician install any such switch.That is interesting. Thank you very much for that tip. I just added six USB outlets to my house and they all had 3 leads, so I was anticipating that the switches would, too. I guess I will know soon enough when I go to install some!