I have installed over 20 of the GE 2-way dimmers with zero problems. However, these 3 ways were a complete pain to install. I got a voltmeter and figured out the wiring exactly. But, no matter what I did the lights would not reach full brightness unless the aux switch was held down. They also flickered enough to give you a seizure. I had them like this for almost a month... I tried everything, insulating the yellow wire, using different travelers, switching switch locations, trying new switches... I was about to give up and eliminate the aux switch and use a 2 way. But then reading a forum online I finally found the secret to making these things work!!!!!
WIRE THE WHITE WITH RED STRIPE WIRE ON THE AUX SWITCH TO NEUTRAL!!!!!
This immediately fixed all of the issues I had with these switches!!!! They work great now and I am very happy. I would give the switches 5 stars... But, you can't ignore the crappy instructions. The fact that it took several months to figure out how to get these to work is ridiculous; But, now that they work they are great!
This forum has a ton of info on wiring and is where I found the secret to getting these things working:
[...] GE 45613 Z-Wave Technology 3-Way Dimmer Switch Kit
I am now returning my second GE Z-wave 3-way dimmer switch set and I'm not going to try another. The auxilliary switch didn't work with either set. The downstairs main switch is fine, dims up and down as expected. The auxiliary switch, installed upstairs, turns the overhead light on, but can't turn it off. Instead, once lit, the overhead just flashes a little brighter when tapping the top or bottom of the toggle. The instructions were confusing so I had an electrician install the switches. He couldn't get it to work, even after I called him back a second time. I called GE customer service who said it was defective and return to Amazon. Looks like my new unit is "defective", too. So much for going with the "big name" brand.
I purchased this product (GE 45613 Z-Wave Technology 3-Way Dimmer Switch Kit) last week and spent an entire weekend (~12 hrs) figuring out how to get this working. Firstly, the instructions are garbage. Besides the circuit diagram, it helps an average Joe in no way. It's more or less for a qualified electrician to install. Regardless, I managed to install the switches in my staircase, but at first the auxiliary switch wasn't controlling the dimmer properly. I gave up and finally decided to call an electrician. He was very confident and claimed he has installed switches like these before. So he was able to install the switch, infact, he did the same installation as I did, but I just didn't have the patience to really play around with it to see it working. Anyway, so after the switches installed and they were in conjunction, I soon after realized that the lights were not at full brightness. Like the reviewer before for this product said, when you tapped and held the auxiliary switch, the lights will go to full brightness, but as soon as you let go of it, it will go to about 70% of its full brightness. I thought maybe after syncing it with the remote control, it'll go to full brightness, but that didn't help either. After the full weekend of frustration, I finally took of the switches and was thinking of burning them, but I thought why waste $$$ on such a useless product. It's not worth the $$$ to waste!
On the contrary, I have GE's 2-way ZWave switch (GE 45606 Z-Wave Technology 2-Way Dimmer Switch), and so far it works flawlessly. Literally, plug and play.
Had some doubts about purchasing this set after all the bad reviews but its worked out fine.
The wiring for these switches is very different from the existing 3-way setup in our home.
You do need to find a neutral at the aux switch end
Once I drew up the new wiring diagram it was easy to modify the existing lines to make these work. I needed to take the HOT wire from the old switch and hook it to one of the old traveler lines as the main switch needs to be at the load end. The other existing traveler becomes the sole wire between the new switches.
All worked fine first time.
The manual could do a better job of pointing out how to modify existing wiring but the reviews here helped a lot, thanks guys.
I'm having the same problem that the other reviewers had, which is that the light does not reach full brightness, except while the auxiliary switch is held down. I called the support number, and they told me this is a known problem, which they think has to do with the distance between the primary and auxiliary switches. But their engineers are still working on debugging it. (How long have they been selling this?) They customer support representative suggested I exchange the product for a different brand. (At least they didn't have me try a bunch of useless troubleshooting steps.)
I do not agree with the other reviewers about the manual though. It's fine. That's not enough to give it more than one star, though.
Amazon should stop selling this product, since it has a defective design, and the manufacturer acknowledges it.
I absolutely love these switches and their capability to be controlled via remote. Thou I also had NUMEROUS problems with the installation of these switches. As I ran into issues since I was replacing a "traditional" 3-way circuit with dimming capabilities. By "traditional" I mean that my lights were wired in the most common configuration which consists of four wires at each switch; one ground, 2 travelers (one acting as a "hot"), and either a line-in or load-out; while the neutral is located elsewhere in the circuit. (In other words it was exactly like the image labeled "Typical 3-way circuit" on page 5 of the manual included with these GE switches.)
In my case the neutral wire was easily accessible in one of the gang-boxes. So given the neutral wire's location, this is the box in which I was required to install the primary switch (the one with five wires). Thou in order be have a neutral wire available to connect with the primary switch I had to add an additional wire to point where the neutral wires bypassed the original switches, and I used this "new" neutral wire to connect with the neutral wire on the primary switch.
From this point I had to determine the flow of electricity from the auxiliary switch through the primary switch and onto the lights, also known as the "load" (I would highly recommend drawing out the circuit so you don't get confused and can easily reference it if you need to). After figuring out the configuration of the circuit I attached the line-in (also known as the "hot" or common wire and usually black) to the black wire of the auxiliary switch. At this point I was left with the two traveler wires from the previous configuration; in my case one was red and the other was white with black sharpie/tape (which indicated that it was NOT being used as a neutral).
Knowing that the primary switch would require a "hot" wire in the other location, I decided to use the white/taped wire in a similar manner to which it was previously utilized. So at the point where the line-in wire and the black wire, from the auxiliary switch, would be connected using one twist connector I also attached the white/taped wire by screwing all three wires into on connector (this would allow the white/taped wire to serve as a "hot" wire running the primary switch, as the current is able to bypass the auxiliary switch).
Given my decision to use the white/taped wire as a "hot", I was left with the red wire to serve as the single "Traveler" wire (though this could have been reversed as long as I knew which wire was which when connecting the primary switch). So I connected the yellow wire from my auxiliary switch to the red wire using a twist connector. And of course I attached the green wire to a ground wire; thou this should always be the first connection made during installation.
In the second location, where the primary switch HAD to be installed; I found the red "Traveler" wire and white/taped (hot) wire coming from the auxiliary switch in addition to the newly created "neutral" wire and the black/load/hot wire running out and to the lights. So I started by connecting the green wire from the primary switch to the ground wire. I then connected the white wire to the neutral wire, which I had previously created. Next I connected the tiny yellow wire to the red "Traveler" wire and the black wire (from the primary switch) to the white/taped (hot) wire. This left me with the Blue/load wire which was connected with the black (load/line-out) wire running to the lights.
After installing the switches in this configuration, everything seemed to work fine so I installed the switches into the gang boxes. After this I noticed that the lights could not be made to achieve full brightness and that they would actually flicker. Knowing that often a flicker means a bad connection exists somewhere in the circuit, I removed the switches from the gang boxes in order to check the tightness of the connections. Once I removed the switches I noticed that both of my problems were improved immediately, and that all of the connections were in fact tight/good.
Since everything appeared to be working correctly I placed the switches back into their respective boxes, after which I began noticing the same problems/issues. It was only after I removed the primary switch a second time that I came to the realization that the problems were actually being caused by inference with the tiny yellow wire. In fact if you apply pressure to (squeeze) this wire with your fingers it will actually cause the lights to change brightness.
Ergo I concluded that the post-installation problems are a result of the size of the yellow wire, as it is either too large of a gauge, not well enough insulated, or both (just an FYI wiring gauge is opposite than one would assume, that is the smaller the gauge the larger the wire).
In order to rectify this and fix the problems I spliced a replacement wire (of the same gauge/size as the other wires) in place of the smaller yellow traveler; though I would have preferred to completely replace the wire but I do not have a Soldering Iron. Since I could not completely replace the wire I created a splice as close to the back of the switch as possible, while leaving enough wire available to allow the use of an Insulated Butt Connector Terminal (which would also serve to insulate the little wire remaining as I placed it tight against the back of the switch) . I then used this replacement wire to connect to the red "Traveler" wire. This seemed to fix all of the problems I was experiencing, as I virtually removed the small yellow wire and replaced it with what I have determined to be a more appropriately sized and insulated wire. - Zwave - Dimmer - Home Automation - Lighting Controller'
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