Very old house two single pole switches one light - trying to disable one light to prep for wireless 3 way

Question

The title is confusing here's what I have.

House built and wired in 1934. Two single pole switches operating one light. This doesn't behave like two 3 way switches so we regularly find ourselves at one end of the stairwell with inability to to turn light on.

Each switch is wired with a ground, line, and load. However, all wires are coated with a layer of black cloth. There may be an inner layer of something. I disconnected all the wires on one switch before figuring out what was what by the position they were in. This is the switch I want to bypass and replace with a remote wireless controller.

I sort of figured out using wire position and a multi-meter the ground and line wire on the base switch. This is the one I want to install the wireless transmission switch.

The old switches have one connector on one side and two on the other. The assumption I made was that when the single connector was high on the left that it was the ground and the upper one on the right was load and the lower one was line/live.

1st I need to know how to connect the wires on the side that will be replaced by the remote controller. I tried putting wire nuts to cap each wire and just left the old switch in place on the one I will replace with the wireless transmitter but the the light never came on.

How to proceed?

Answer 1

Older switches tend to not have ground, so that itself sounds a bit unusual. On the other hand, switches (old or new) never have neutral unless unless they have some smarts (WiFi, timer, motion sensor, etc.) that need constant power. So you may actually have miswired 3-way switches.

If these are regular (not 3-way) switches then line vs. load is 100% meaningless. So making any assumptions based on wire position is going to be random at best and dangerous at worst.

Figure out what you actually have

If wires are bare, they are (or should be) grounds.

Beyond that, especially with old insulation (black and white can both head towards gray over time) it is hard to tell. Add in 3-way switches and it gets even worse.

• Turn off the breaker
• Disconnect all wires from both switches and arrange them safely
• Turn on the breaker
• Use a non-contact voltage tester and/or a multimeter to figure out which wire (should just be one wire on one switch) is actually hot. Tag it (e.g., black tape)
• Turn off the breaker
• With a bit of testing (there are a bunch of ways using a multimeter) figure out which wires are connected between the two switch boxes and tag them (e.g., red and yellow tape)

When all is done, you should have a better idea of which wire(s) come from the panel, which ones go between the switches and which ones go to the light. Diagram it and then we can figure out the rest.