Here are some photos of DIY attempt at cbus/home automation, sent in by Trevor, who is a fellow electrician from NSW. The client bought the house off of an ex electrical engineer and things started to go astray not long after. She couldn’t work out which switch controlled which lights, lights and fans would come on and go off again by themselves, which became almost to much to live with, so she called in the experts.
The previous owner had a mixture of cbus control as well as standard wiring installed throughout, (mind you, none of it was certified, which could affect that insurance claim if it ever came to such a situation)which made it quite difficult to fault find and rectify the faults. Not only where there issues with segregation of extra low voltage and 240 volt cabling, AS3000 regulations, problamatic switching and to top it all off? No documentation came with the installed system at all as well as common neutrals, which were found across different final sub circuits, an incredibly dangerous combination if you are a new player in the game and possibly not paying attention. It really was a total mess and very unsafe.
It took us about a week to remove all the home grown cbus automation system that had been installed as it just wasn’t possible to modify the system installed to make sure it was up to australian standards. We then ran new switch feeds andrewired the light cables back to the switch positions, making everything safe and working as it should. Quite a job.
Please click for full view.