indago wrote:

040811 1412 - RSMEINER posted:


If you have a large house, those low voltage remote switching systems are
really great, and, as noted, in a master bedroom, a selector switch and
button arrangement can be installed to turn on or off just about any light
in the house or outside lights. It is a shame that someone has wired such a
mess as illustrated, but, and again, as noted, it is not a disaster, and it
can be repaired.

A remote low voltage switching system would be extremely desirable in the
case of long corridors in large buildings to control the corridor lighting
from several different places rather than using the usual 3-way and 4-way
lighting switching systems to reduce the voltage drop on the long runs of
lighting wiring.



Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner.
We found a master board with a ton of buttons on it behind the
curtins in the master bedroom. None of the buttons are marked
of course so it will be trial and error to figure out what is what.

Thanks

Randy


I installed a low voltage switching system in a large house that I had a few
years back and used a ratchet type relay. Pulse it once and it ratchets on,
and pulse it again and it ratchets off. It used just two control wires, and
was rated for 20 amps; 24 volt control. I made a pulse control circuit
board that produced a DC pulse of around 36 volts and then quickly decayed.
This would eliminate double pulsing in case a push button happened to make
double contact on one push. I used the round,white doorbell push buttons in
single gang stainless steel plates around the house. One of the plates,
which controlled some outside lights, and kitchen, entry, and basement
lights, was a single gang with six buttons in it. The kids had a time
trying to remember which button worked which light. The higher buttons
worked the high outside lights, and lower buttons worked the basement
lights. The central buttons worked the kitchen and landing lights. Easy.
In the master bedroom and kitchen I had a one gang plate with one button and
a selector switch to select the relay and the button to engage it, mostly
for outside lights for security purposes. I had a panel made at a local tin
shop and used aluminum angle and punched holes in it and placed rubber
grommets to set the relays into. This separated the high voltage from the
low voltage in the panel. I used 22 guage paired wiring -- brown/tan -- and
had no problem with voltage drop. One run was around two hundred feet of
wire out to the garage to work an outside light. The 36 volt DC pulse
wasn't on the wire long enough to create a problem, and the relay, which was
in the garage in a separate box pulsed on and off as demanded.

I thought it was a neat system. It worked really well. It was safe, and
there was no maintenance to it.

I hope you left thorough documentation behind for the next owners! One
of the problems with our low-voltage house was that there were NO
circuit layouts or any other sort of documentation beyond a few
mislabeled switches.

FurPaw