40 YEAR OLD 3-Way Switch NEVER Worked. Is It FIXABLE? 

4:55 when the painter's helper's friend's drunk uncle says yeah I can hook up switches.

I'm retired. Glad to see a Brother that likes to do things right and still with pride. We all do things a little different, but with the same outcome. Great channel. Drive on Brother.

As a sparky I found your approach interesting. Slow and methodical. I was trained with a great phrase in mind "There are old electricians and bold electricians but there are no old bold electricians". It's a shame that never worked right from the start, I've drawn that straw a few times. Glad you fixed it correctly, and the fact you pretwisted your wires, used an appropriate filler plate instead of a dummy switch , and all your screws were vertical are all signs of a professional. One thing I'll add about ohming out wires is the meter can read through incandescent light bulbs and some other loads for any would be DIY people watching the video.

Comments about how long it takes to do a project? That tells me that you guys are more than likely doing it right and not cutting corners. The entire reason I have learned to do so much of this stuff with help from people like you. I can’t find anyone who can do anything right. I ALWAYS have to come back and fix it myself. Wish I would have learned this kind of stuff long ago I might not be so broke and depressed/unhappy in life.

I don't know how many 3-ways that I've had to correct over the years. But, a older lady customer had to go to the bottom of her basement stairs for 10-15 yrs just to turn the lights on just because someone wired the 3-way backwards. I was like..wow! You did good on this one Paul. Proud of ya.

I know you were scratching your head for awhile, but finally got it. Now that’s SATISFACTION! I like that you were taught about 3way switch positions. Circuit off , all switches down. I moved into a new house which had some 3ways like that and some not. When I tried to explain to the “electrician”, he didn’t understand. I asked him to leave, then fixed myself. Get a tripod for the camera and the young gun climb into hot attic. LOL Thanks for the upload.

Hey gang, at one point in this video when I’m tracing out the wires, we moved a couple of cables from their original location and that’s why it’s a little confusing. Hang in there with me, we sort it out eventually 👍👊 Thanks for watching!!

What a PITA to deal with. Woking on my wiring is a pain too but the feeling of doing it right just kick ass.

"I can do it right, or I can do it fast. Pick one." You guys are awesome. Forget the critics.

Nice job. I just had a project like that today. Side-by-side plugins' right side work fine when I plug something in, left side plug something in,Turn it on then the ceiling light and fan would turn on. Fun to figure out,😆 Got it 👍

As a Journeyman Electrician, I appreciate how you inform Peyton safety of not just construction but on basically everything you would run into! You do a great job explaining everything! I really enjoy your videos

Great job! Having fixed a similar issue in my house I would make these suggestions: 1. Use Wago connectors instead of twist connectors. They are far easier to work with, faster, easier to undo if you make a mistake and they provide a reliable connection. 2. I am not a licensed electrician but with your issue I would try a tone generator to trace the lines. It probably would be faster, but I could be wrong. On my repair, I fumbled my way through to figure out what would work. The electrician had royally screwed up a four gang box . 3. You can drywall over the open switch void where you took out the half-hot switch. . It is more work, but it looks much better. It is code compliant because drywall is will not conduct electricity. 4. To find your hot wire use your Klein touchless current checker, it is faster.

Trouble shooting is becoming a lost art.

OH MAN! 24:32 Since I moved into my house I have had these 3 3-way switches and not all of them were in the off position when the light was off, it really has been irritating me for a while, then you said "Turn over the switch" I was like "F ing duh!", so at 11 pm at night I am turning off my breaker and flipping over a switch, AMAZING! Thanks for the help!!

Great video! (as usual) God, I love watching people work who know what the heck they are doing. It's pure joy! Thank you, gentlemen. My favorite test of your common electronics "know it all" is to ask them to draw the 3 way switch circuit for me. Then I drop the nuke on them when I say, "Now add the third switch". I love that deer in the headlights look! Go ahead, try it if you don't know the answer. Don't cheat (yourself) and look it up. You will love the solution when you find it. You're welcome. Trivia: The three way switch is what is called a "parity encoder". It becomes most apparent when you have more than two switches on the circuit, as in multiple landings in a stairwell. The rule is, if an even number of the switches are up, the circuit is on. If an odd number of switches are up, then the circuit is off. OR vice versa depending on the preference of the electrician to install all of his switches in the same orientation as shown in this video. Parity encoding is used in computers as a simple first order error checking mechanism.

Love that you pretwist with plyers then cap with wire nut.

This is more like a electrics wiring short course for anyone who wants to learn the basics and do a successful troubleshooting at home respecting safety rules first. Nicely done folks 👍

Man my head hurts just watching this pro doing what he does best! This is to me is a rocket science...

That tip about wire-nutting the hot and the neutral and then checking for continuity elsewhere is very useful.

I have that same Klein voltage tester and I recently received a notice of recall on it. On another note, I really enjoy your videos.

When I wire new I always put power in and out on the bottom and switch legs on top.. avoids confusion down the road.

I'm looking all over in those boxes for a solid ground, wow! how those boxes didn't arc or short something is amazing

Good work fellas I bet those home owners were happy after all those years of goofy wiring. Now we just need to clone you two and ship ya all over the country so we can rebuild America with a little pride and quality work. Thanks for the video👍👍👍

You fellows are great teachers and your team work as father and son is beauruful to see!!

Great job. One thing that i would add that I learned the hard way, you should put your tester in both, the top and bottom parts of the receptacle, just in case someone installed a split receptacle and did not mark it. I got zapped once because I only tested the top of a switched receptacle. I started pulling out the receptacle and pow. It only takes another 2 or 3 seconds to test both.

Great video. Only thng I"da done differently is move the dinning room switch to the dinning room side and fan switch to the fan side.

If this is a townhouse. I would assume the wiring next door is also messed up too.

I can't figure out if you're actually an electrician or a general contractor/handyman. Your good at electrical, know the mechanics of circuits and I'm assuming know national and local codes. You have good help with your sons and I, like the others have commented, really enjoy your videos. You ought to purchase some Wago 221 Series Lever Nuts (they go down to 10 AWG). I think you will love them, but maybe not love the cost, specially for large bid jobs. But for repair and rework they're great.

all your screws are straight up - you are a master!

I feel like an idiot. I've never thought about the pre-bending of the wires to put the switches back in. Neat "trick"! :)

from the look of the porch light, whoever messed up those switches probably did the siding

Enjoy every video. Would have liked to have seen your sketch. I am weekend warrior teaching my son very basic electrical. You tube / Stud Pack is a savior in picking up safe proper technique.

You know what they say, "No good deed goes unpunished." lol

idk why I was recommended this video but it was informative and entertaining

very cool man, I like these kinds of electrical detective work videos 👍

What happened to the fan rated Box for the fan?? Also, in my city, the jboxes shall be readily accessible. That means the jbox should have been cut into the ceiling not buried in the attic.

I would have loved to have seen the diagram that you created for this.

The only problem that I saw was the problem with the wrong switches ( not 3-way) at the beginning was never addressed when you put everything back together. Also tighten all screws wired or not and put a couple of wraps of electrical tape to cover all screws on switches. Not necessary but safer.

It's amazing what you find in older homes. I'm renovating our '78 Townhouse and I was constantly having WTF moments with electrical, plumbing, drywall, whenever I started working on something or going behind the walls. So called "professionals." While installing a ceiling fan in the master bedroom, I could not detect the studs. As I tried to find out what was going on, I noticed the ceiling drywall was hanging about 5-6" off the joist; another side job to reattach the ceiling to the joist. I spent a good amount of time in the hot attic wiring fans, lights, bathroom exhaust fans, removing insulation to reattach the ceiling to the joist and cleaning out the attic...we are selling this house.

i always tell my customers that troubleshooting a circuit issue can take 5 minutes or 5 hours. but its such a great feeling to find and fix the issue and get paid by a happy customer

Dad's on the job are the best. Treasure these days, Jordan.

I like the 3 way switches that only have two wires.

Love your videos, nice pacing, no jibber jabber just good instruction and really like to see a father son team work. Keep it up guys.

never separate neutral wires without separating all hot wires first as a habit. if there is power to a circuit you can ruin tv's or appliances with a neutral back feed(again if you have power while working on it)

hardest part about electrical work is packing the wires back into the box

I am betting this was set up as a California 3 way run, and when you added that 14/3 you corrected the issue because the original guy forgot which wire controlled that switch by not marking it!

I knew you were gonna end up in the attic on this one.

I had a brother-in-law "help" me hook up 3-way switches. The first thing he did was cut off my wire labels.....

When testing for voltage you should always test to ground, sometimes if you have a nuisance neutral it will show 0 volts when it’s actually hot

This would be a good application for blue phase tape, I’d confuse that red-taped-black wire with the traveler.

As a European I find it always very interesting to see American elektricity wiring. One thing that we do that could have saved you time is using wire in corogated tubing so you can later add an extra wire if needed. Something I'm a bit envious of is the flexibility drywall gives you if you want to add something later on. Here everything is brick.

3 way switches, 4 way switches easy as pie just keep the travellers and commons in their correct places! If in doubt, ring them out!

If you're going through the trouble of adding a new line to the fan (and have access!) make it a 3+G that way if you ever want to switch the fan separately all you have to do is bump out that box or put a double switch in.

As soon as you opened the switch cover and did not see 3 conductor cable you knew this never worked. There are 2 more ways this could have been corrected. Replacing the incorrect 2 conductor cable with 3 conductor would be one, replacing the 2 conductor cable with 14 - 2 - 2 would let you control the fan and light separately.

Right way and easiest way to 3w switch is to travel 3/14 to each box and travel from the box that have no hot to the light or fan etc and feed power by the other box but you can feed from the box that have power and go to fan by 2-14 but you travel switch’s with 3/14 Nice job there Great fix for it to work though

Awesome video! Good job unfudging that hot mess. Very informative keep up the great work and these type of video ls coming.

i totally love it how the whole junctionbox moves and wiggles inside the wall whenever he touches a wire. Is this american craftsmenship?

Its good to see he wears a mask at times ive learned it sucks without one.

Great trouble shooting video!! Love the details of the wiring repair!! Feel free todo more trouble shooting videos in the future ! Keep up the good work & see you guys in your next video!!

my house is all weird electrical problems the guy before me just threw in a 3-way switch where a regular single pole switch goes and hooked up the ground wire to one traveler terminal, he had it so screwed up he had to have power in white and ground wire wires on whole circuit . wires were reversed at breaker panel

.... and I was so proud of myself in figuring out my first 4 way switch... until I saw this rat's nest and just admired you chasing all this stuff down. Electricity is like computer programming. At the core it is simple, simply yes or no. Electricity is simple. It runs in a circle. How something that simple becomes so amazingly complex is why people like you will forever be in demand. Thank you for this video. Much respect.

When he didn't get continuity when he thought he was going to. LMAO I've been there before. Cheers from Chicago!

As a DIY I really appreciate how detailed your videos are including showing that it often isn't easy to correct problems but with thought and effort it can be done.

I feel like I’m back in school again.. Thanks Stud Man.! Sub’d 👍

Why not just retrofit the standard 14/3 three-way switch wires to the two boxes and fan? It would have been a whole lot more straightforward and require only one additional retrofit wire. What am I missing?

the fan and light switches were at seperate boxes originally

Looks like another great video, incorrectly wired switches are really frustrating

I never could of figured that out and I’m above average with wiring for a diy. That was a mess.

In my years of construction it has been amazing the problems I have seen done by those who should have known better.

People wonder why it cost so much for electrical work. Because it's normally not an easy fix

damn this is like a TV show with the way this professional talks and handles everything.

Son is having a good time with dad. Construction and wiring is my passion. I wish my dad was cool like that. 👍🏾

For this video in particular, it might help to show a schematic of what you had before, and what you did after. That wire pull looked like a pita. I’d love to see a video on the drywall repair. Also, was the fan and fan light all wired into that same switch? What a mess.

Congratulations on the 100k subs!

I click the like button because I love the creative ways you guys come up with to ask us to click the like button!

Yes

I hear you on the snowball effect. That's why I play dumb when friends ask me for help 😆

Love the video man! Just found you guys and subscribed. My dad passed away when I was 19 so I didn't get a chance to learn all his carpentry knowledge but thanks to u tube I've made my way and been doing all kinds of projects at my house for years now. Glad to see you guys working together.

I see this all the time. Someone doesn’t understand the concept of three way switches but dang if they don’t try. My advice is to always have a competent person do electrical work.

22:45 did you just bare hands connect two live wires together? That's... Bold.

Also would have been a good time to eliminate the plug on a switch and run a wire to make the Fan on a separate switch.

i appreciate you guys

Those switched outlets by the front door were very popular. Floor lamps were the rage. With the proximity to the outlet closer to the door, I would have left the outlet switched and left all three switches in operation. Maybe floor lamps are coming back. Or a smart switch for Christmas decks. Besides, it gives the grandchildren something to figure out when they visit. ;)

Thanks for the video. Every time I work on switches like that, I usually trip a breaker (or worse) before I get it right 8-). I'm a little confused by some of your terms for switches. There may be trade jargon difference I don't completely understand. Maybe you meant "throw" instead of "pole"? I'm not an electrician, but I am an electrical engineer. When we work with switches or relays (not house wiring, but other electrical systems) we use the term 'pole' to mean how many separate circuits are switched. We use the word "throw" to mean how many different paths a circuit can be switched to. I would call your 'single pole' switch a 'single pole, single throw' (SPST) switch. There is only one 'pole' (circuit) and only 'throw' (off or on). I would also call your three-way switch a ' single pole' switch because it still only switches one circuit. But is has two 'throws'. It can switch the single pole to two different paths. It is still a single "pole" but a double "throw", so I'd call it a 'single pole double throw' (SPDT) switch. I suspect there's a different jargon for electricians, like Single Pole, Three-Way switch, and Four-Way switch. Am I right? I have a friend who worked in Industraial Power all his career, and he used another set of names for switches (Form A, Form B , Form C) I never got used to his names! Thanks again for the great video.

Greetings from Australia - Have lived in North America before, did some network cabling, changed a few switches, but 3-way wiring is always something I had a hard time understanding - you did a great job of explaining everything in this video. Love the ohming out technique for identifying cables. Well done!

If you had ran new romex from switch box to switch box, you could have wired three way for light AND had a separate switch for the fan at the front door without joining the wires in the blue attic box.

God Bless ya Paul and J…..taking the hard road so the client has it easy with no worries. Great lesson on wire troubleshooting.

Wow, whoever did this job before you was either lazy, impatient, or just Un educated. That’s so unfortunate but good for us electricians 🤩

Great video! I'm also a licensed electrician. There are a couple of things I would have done differently: 1) Instead of running 14/2 cable to the fan, run 14/3 cable, then you won't need to use the ugly pull-chains. You could use a wall control unit for the fan while still having 3-way operation for the light. Also, I would have waited until early the next morning to get up in the attic. I would never go up there in the afternoon, unless in winter or on a rainy day.

You showed everything but how to wire the traveller! you needed to show how a three way switch works.

Another great video Paul and Jordan, with great end results. It's a pleasure watching your video's while getting some tips as well. Both of you remain blessed and we will talk on the next one :)

You are absolutely right that this 3-way NEVER worked as it should. This one goes to the discredit of an idiot that wired the house at construction. MOST of the time, however, the non functioning 3 (or 4 .or 5 ETC) is due to an DIY install of a subsequent dimmer or replacement of one with traveler wires screwed up . USSUALLY the connection at the fixture (light,fan,etc. ) is ok , house was wired just fine originally . I bought a home with THREE of these such circuits that over the years had been screwed up. EACH one was a ten minute fix . Locate the 'hot' start switch and follow the current . Done .

who did that siding???

From my experience as an electrician: there is never an abandoned traveler.

When I used to do PA system installs in buildings, community halls - you name it, I had a wireless ohm meter. You clip on end on a wire and touch the other side and continuity would go wireless. When doing masses upon masses of speaker cable going to unlimited spots, it was a necessity.

Great videos. Is a wire clamp missing 20:20 on that box? Thanks!

Hey Gang I enjoyed the video. Wow what a Project. I think some diyer might have done it a long time ago. Oh And that filler you put there by the door. Another idea too is putting a receptacle in its place for convienence. But wow this turned into a big Project. Good toknow.

Stud Pack - I know you said you did not want to use a California/Chicago/Carter 3-way, but that is probably how it was originally wired. You said both switch boxes have both power and neutral, and that the switches had been replaced. You could do this with only 1 wire from each switch to the light/fan as the common on each switch, with the switch legs to power and neutral. Not code now (since 1923), but it would work, so your claim that it never could work is not correct. Not to code as it can leave power to one side of the light, but it can work.

I'm a journeyman plumber been plumbing for 9yrs. Lately I've been wanting to pick up on a new trade. I find this sparky stuff very interesting.

I appreciate that you managed to fix it correctly and assuming that you are a licensed general contractor that gives you the ability to legally do that electrical work. However I can't respect the idea of a contractor recommending any non licensed home owner DIY their own electrical. That is a job for a licensed electrician for reasons that should be painfully obvious.