On Friday, June 21, 2013 7:13:02 AM UTC-4, Doug Miller wrote:
Fred McKenzie wrote in news:fmmck-CB580A.22112020062013@

5ad64b5e.bb.sky.com:



In article

,

Robert Macy wrote:



As I said, if light switches can be made

to be all down when off; it's easy to tell which light switch

activated the light. But, when you have a rack of switches in arbitray

positions and all your lights are out but one...



Robert-



I missed the earlier comments, but I see a point of confusion.



You're missing what Robert's *really* confused about... see below.



Do you want any one switch to be able to turn off the light if a

different switch turned it on? That requires a string of switches, with

the end switches in a SPDT configuration. Any intermediate switches

would be in a DPDT configuration. (There may be some 4 terminal

switches intended for this function.) As mentioned, you could swap two

wires at any one of the switches to give you "All Down Equals OFF".



But that would be of little value if you want to know which one switch

was responsible for leaving the light on.



Knowing which switch is responsible for leaving the light on is of no value to begin with. If the

light can be turned on OR OFF from any of multiple switches, WHO CARES which switch

turned it on? It. Does. Not. Matter.



For that, you would simply

connect all SPST switches in parallel. All switches in the up position

would need to be turned off for the light to go off. Then you would not

have "N-Way" switches where one of N switches could turn off a light

another switch turned on.



... thus completely defeating the purpose of having multiple switches.

Heh, I'm with you on this one Doug. I don't see the point to the
whole exercise. But there are others here like Dennis, that think
we shouldn't be asking the question about "why" he wants it, what
purpose it serves, just tell him how to do it.

He started off with:

"Plus, (original installer) paid
no attention to having all of the individual multiple switches end up
in any proper position when the hallway light is off, so want to
change. Swapping these two switches in their physical location in the
box is no problem the wiring appears to be long enough, although the
cabling comes down through the inlet holes in the wrong places. but
still reaches.

Big problem is the best way to change the switching action of the
multiple control switch. "

Which implies that there is an expectation of what the "proper
position is for 3-way, 4-way, 5-way switches should be to each other?
No electrician even considers this, because the light can be
on with some switches up, some down and no one that I know
cares. You just look at the light. If Robert rewires it so that
the light is off with all 4 down, then if you're standing at one
switch and the light is off, all you know is that the one
corresponding switch is also down. You still don't know what
position the other two switches are in. So, AFAIK, you would have to go
check one of those as well. Or you could just look at the light.
In every case I've seen, it's easier to look at the light for
a hallway, then check at least two switches....

If this really is an OCD thing, like Dennis says, that's fine, and
he can get all 4 down with the light off. It's just that if it
really solves something that we're missing, it would be nice to
know what that is. Like you, if someone wants to set about fiddling
with something that is work and seems to serve no purpose, I try
to understand the real objective, so that we're not just providing
steps in some process that doesn't solve anything.