welcome back to the channel
a few weeks ago i put out the video
showing the three-way circuit in my
garage and if you remember
it was the three-way circuit was used to
turn the lights on and off at two
different places so since i have
two doors then i wanted to be able to
turn the light on as i come in one door
and then if i decide to leave out of the
other door i can turn the light off over
there and so i thought it would be a
good idea to put out a video on a
four-way
circuit
and
what those are used for is controlling
the lights
from more than two places
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you can put as many
four-way switches in as you need within
reason and so if you had a big garage
and say you had four doors you could
actually hook this up and put enough
switches to where you can control the
lights from four different places or
five different sticks however many
switches you want to put in you can
control it from that many places
so here's a simple
four-way circuit to control a light
and i caught a little bit of flack
because i was calling this romex
and the reason i call it romex is
because i don't intend for these videos
to be
used to train people how to do
electricity formally i just want
homeowners to be able to walk into home
depot and go talk to the nice old man
and tell him that hey i need
you know wire for
whatever i'm doing and you don't need to
go in there and use a bunch of technical
jargon
so since i make these videos for my
friends and for
homeowners that just want to be able to
do this stuff by themselves i'm going to
call it romex if you want to crucify me
on youtube go ahead and put it in the
comments that it has a specific term
that's fine
so
this romex is the 14 2
so it has the two wires
and as another part of the circuit just
like in the three-way switch
there's there's three wires
in
this 14-3
and the reason we need the three wires
because we need to use this traveler
wire
in our circuit
so just like in the other video you have
your panel blocks with all your breakers
here in the middle and your two bus bars
on the side where your neutral and your
grounds
are connected
these wires could have easily been put
over here as well
so we have our breaker
and you'll see the black wire travels
along
through the romex up to this first screw
now don't get confused when you see
these switches
you'll notice on a
typical single switch
you'll just have two screws on the side
and nothing on the other side
and that's just because you're just
controlling the black wire but on
a three and a four-way circuit you need
special switches
so you know that this is a three-way
switch because it has the black screw
where the power comes in
and then you have the two screws at the
bottom
for your traveler wires
and then if you come over here to the
next switch
you have one two
three four screws
and that's important because all this
all this four-way switch is doing
is controlling your travelers
so as the power comes through into the
black screw
it'll leave through
one of these screws
depending on if the switch is up or down
so let's just say that with the switch
being down
the power goes
in this in the black screw and comes out
this gold screw
then the power goes along through the
black wire
up to our next switch
now let's say with this switch being
down
it breaks the circuit to this other
black wire over here so now if we flip
this switch up
it'll allow the power to travel through
through the screw and continue on in the
circuit
and then we come to
our second
three-way switch
and you'll notice that the travelers are
up at the top now and these switches
obviously
they're going to be in a box or
something so i could have just easy drop
drawn the circuit with the travelers at
the bottom i just chose to do it this
way
and so
you
have the black wire coming in
hits the gold screw
and then
depending on if this switch is up or
down it'll allow the power to go through
the black
screw here through the black wire and up
to your light and complete the circuit
keep in mind
that these
all of the neutral wires are always
connected so you'll see in my other
videos
how they were always wired up together
so they
constantly form
a solid
connection all the way up to the light
and then it's just the black wire
or in this case in some cases with this
circuit with a red traveler wire if the
power depending on which way the switch
is going
if the power is going to go through the
red wire and complete the circuit
but the gold
the the copper wire the ground wire
and i just
also showed this wire being green
because sometimes you'll see these as
green wires as well and those are the
colors of markers that i have
and so
you've kind of seen i think if you watch
the other videos you've seen how these
are connected up so really what you want
to focus on
in this video
is how the power is being directed
through these switches
you want to make sure that the wires
from
one end of the circuit are
going to two screws on the bottom
and then the wires from the other part
of the circuit are going to the top and
that they don't get switched because
think of this as kind of an x
as
the power comes into either one of these
you flip the switch it's either going to
send the power to
either other screw
and if you get these wrong obviously
your circuit's either going to always be
on or always be off
so just one more look at this circuit
before
i get out the live circuit that i made
and so of course do all this electrical
work at your own risk and i'm sure some
of you are not going to like the next
portion of this but i did make
a live circuit
and all i did is i just put a plug end
on that i'm going to plug into an
electrical cord
so you're going to come down and the
wire's
coming into the black screw
and then you have your two traveler
wires at the bottom
and then of course you have your whites
hooked up
and your ground screw has a pigtail
where it comes over and connects to the
other two wires
then you come down to your three wire
where you have your travelers coming in
the bottom of the switch
once again your grounds and your
neutrals connected
i don't know why you can see it but
behind here
the traveler wires are connected
same thing on the next switch connect it
up
ground wire is connected
neutral oil can wire connected
so the traveler wires out of the second
switch
and into the bottom of the three-way
switch
and then of course we have our black
wire coming out
and up to our light
same thing with our neutral
up to our light so once again please no
crazy comments
i know that's a little bit dangerous i'm
wearing gloves that aren't going to
conduct anything and like i said i've
used these a few times so
it's a little bit dangerous but it's
going to be okay i don't have a use for
a four-way circuit
i just want you to see that this is
actually going to work so let's say you
set this up in your shop
and you walk into your shop
turn the light on
and there's your light
and then
you've got another door
put the switch the lights off
then you can come back in another door
turn it on
turn it off
and then same thing here
so just one last little bit of proof
turn the first switch on
and the other one
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on one of the main reasons i wanted to
make this video is you might have a
place to where this circuit would be
ideal for your situation so we greatly
appreciate everybody who has subscribed
to our channel
and we really appreciate the comments
and the interaction we get with people
we're going to keep trying to get better
this youtube thing i know a lot of times
i'm sitting there stumbling through
things because i'm trying to think about
stuff and trying to look in the camera
still getting used to that but i hope we
could keep putting out
decent content that people can use and
once again we appreciate watching
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you