I am trying to replace a "regular" light switch with one that has a timer built in. The old one, as shown below, on the left, has two black wires attached, and no others.
The new switch requires attaching a hot, load, neutral, and ground. I have attempted to do so, but so far it is not working.
Before:
Before (side view)
In order to hook up the new switch, I:
- assumed the bottom wire of the original switch was the line/hot wire and the top was the load and attached the wires accordingly. The new switch's red wire is labelled "LOAD" and the black one is labelled "HOT".
- attached the green ground wire to a screw at the back of the electrical box
- pulled a white wire out of the marret of (unused?) white wires to use as neutral, and attached it to the neutral white wire on the new switch.
I had switched my breaker back on for this circuit and the new switch does not work. I have also tried switching the black and red wires, to no avail. What am I doing wrong?
After:
