Skip to content

# Six Smart Home Wiring Mistakes That Cost Real Money

No-neutral switch boxes, dimmer mismatches, mesh Wi-Fi on bad backhaul, and cloud-dependent lighting. The wiring problems behind most smart home frustration.

(833) 652-8933

## Service directory — California

MAIN 200A
Emergency electrician 24/7 Electrical repair 15A Panel upgrade 200A Rewiring 12 AWG EV charger installation 50A Generator installation 22kW Lighting installation 20A Outlets and switches 20A Commercial electrical 3Ø Smart home wiring CAT6
Every circuit answered by a live dispatcher, 24 hours a day.

Smart home | Updated 2026-06-16 | Rupert Electrical Solutions

Smart home products fail for unglamorous reasons. Not software, not the app, not the brand. Almost always it is what is behind the wall plate, and it could have been checked before anyone spent money.

## 1. Buying smart switches for a box with no neutral

The most expensive smart home mistake, and the most common. Most smart switches need a constant supply to power their radio, which means a neutral in the box. Plenty of older California homes are wired with a switch loop that carries only the hot and the switch leg. No neutral, nowhere to get one.

People discover this with a box of switches already open and non-returnable. The options are: pull a neutral to the box, relocate the switching to where a neutral exists, use a no-neutral device with its bypass module at the fixture, or put the intelligence in the fixture with smart bulbs instead. All workable, all cheaper to decide before purchase.

Take a photo inside one switch box before you buy anything. A white conductor bundled in the back is a good sign. Two conductors and a ground is not.

## 2. Mismatching dimmers and LED drivers

Buzzing, flicker, a narrow usable dimming range, or lights that won't go low without dropping out. This is a dimmer that doesn't suit the driver in the fixture, and it is not a fault in either component individually.

Check the fixture's dimming type, use a dimmer rated for it, and respect the minimum load. Fitting three 9 watt LEDs to a dimmer with a 40 watt minimum will misbehave regardless of brand.

## 3. Solving Wi-Fi problems with more Wi-Fi

Adding mesh nodes to fix dead spots works only if the nodes have good backhaul to each other. A node in a weak-signal spot repeats a weak signal. Two nodes deep, throughput collapses and everyone blames the router.

An ethernet run to a ceiling-mounted access point solves it permanently. That is a smart home wiring job rather than a networking purchase, and it is the single most effective upgrade for a house where the back bedroom never works.

## 4. Wireless cameras where reliability matters

Battery cameras are excellent for renters and for spots with no cable route. They are a poor choice for anything you rely on, because they compete for airtime, drop off during interference, and stop when the battery dies at the least convenient moment.

A PoE camera carries power and data on one cable, has no battery, and does not depend on your Wi-Fi. Where a cable can be run, run one.

## 5. Undersized doorbell transformers

Video doorbells draw far more than the mechanical chime a 1960s transformer was sized for. Symptoms: the doorbell reboots when it streams, the chime is weak or silent, video is choppy.

The fix is a properly sized transformer, and often a bypass at the chime. Small job, immediate result, and worth doing before returning a doorbell that was never faulty.

## 6. Building lighting on cloud-only control

If your lighting depends on a manufacturer's servers, then an internet outage, a vendor's bad deploy, or a company exiting the market takes your lights with it. Wall switches that stop working during an ISP outage are the kind of thing that ends a household's patience with smart homes entirely.

Prefer systems with local control, where the hub or the switch itself holds the logic and the cloud is only for remote access. Lighting is infrastructure. Treat it differently from a smart speaker.

## The order that actually works

1. Survey what is in your walls: neutrals in switch boxes, cable routes, panel capacity.
2. Run the physical infrastructure: ethernet, PoE, any new neutrals or thermostat cable.
3. Pick a control platform, preferring local control for lighting.
4. Buy devices that suit what you found in step one.

Most people run that list backwards, starting at step four. During a remodel it costs almost nothing to pull extra cable while the walls are open, and retrofitting the same cable later can cost twenty times as much.

## Find an electrician in your city

We cover 482 California cities. A few of the busiest:

- Electrician in Los Angeles, CA
- Electrician in San Diego, CA
- Electrician in San Jose, CA
- Electrician in San Francisco, CA
- Electrician in Fresno, CA
- Electrician in Sacramento, CA
- Electrician in Long Beach, CA
- Electrician in Oakland, CA
- Electrician in Bakersfield, CA
- Electrician in Anaheim, CA
- Electrician in Santa Ana, CA
- Electrician in Riverside, CA
- Electrician in Stockton, CA
- Electrician in Irvine, CA
- Electrician in Chula Vista, CA
- Electrician in Fremont, CA
- Electrician in Modesto, CA
- Electrician in Oxnard, CA
- Electrician in Fontana, CA
- Electrician in Moreno Valley, CA

See all 482 cities we serve, or call (833) 652-8933 and we will confirm coverage for your address.

Previous: How Many Outlets on One Circuit? And Why Your Room Only Has Two

All articles

## Book electrical work in California

Call and speak to a dispatcher now, or send the details and we will come back with a time and a price.

(833) 652-8933 Answered 24 hours a day, including holidays
Call (833) 652-8933 Request service