Ok, let me start with I’m not an electrician. This may go completely boom if tried. I want some electrical guru’s out there to look over this and tell me if I’m going up the right path. Or if i’m gonna kill myself.
You would be better off asking this question with the switch manufacturer. They have a better understanding of what will work with their switches. They will be used to similar questions. I have seen many alternate wiring scenarios included with some switches.
Call an electrician. The visit will be very short and may cost a few bucks but it is cheap insurance compared to trusting somebody on the internet.
I am no electrician but I would be very careful connecting a neutral and ground. What some people call neutral cannot be connected to ground.
Jasco refused to comment. Sounded like legal saying we aren’t going to say anything because we don’t want to be liable for anything outside of our basic instructions that don’t work the way many electricians wire two way circuits these days.
not connecting neutral to ground. Ground wires are not shown in this drawing.
I am no electrician either, but I am about three quarters the way through completely rewiring my home and adding extra circuits. I have done my own electrical work for many, many years and am very comfortable around electrical work. I would still not comment on what someone else wants to do as far as electrical work. It is far too easy to get wrong unless you are actually present and have tested and understand the current wiring.
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I am an electrician.
If you label your rectangles, I might be able to understand your drawing a little better 
and advise you further…
That probably would help. I’m off work this week so I don’t have access to my work computer and visio so I can’t re-do the drawing. But if you look at the center rectangle with Line, Load, Traveler and Neutral connected to it, that is a GE Smart Switch. The right hand box with the traveler and the Neutral connected to it is the GE Add-on switch. The bottom Circle with the X in it is a light. I know the lines could have been straighter, but I was two buss and three bus items to keep track of the type of wiring (2+1 Conductor, 3+1 Conductor) to make sure I kept my wires correct in my mind. Also, note, the Safety grounds are not shown in this drawing. I understand that they are at each box and will be connected to the green screw terminals as required. This also does not involve connecting the neutral to the Safety ground. The only place where the safety ground is shown is over by the AC source to show that the Ground and Neutral are indeed bonded at the main panel.
My question would be what’s the problem with getting neutral and line up to the slave switch? I just replaced one of my 3-way switches with a Leviton VRMX1-1LZ and VP00R-1LZ slave. In my case, one switch had the line and load coming into the box, as well as the 14/3 cable going to the remote switch. Re-tasking the 14/3 going to the slave to send neutral, line and traveler up for the VP00R-1LZ instead of the original config that didn’t involve a neutral was quite simple. My switch was originally wired like this: http://www.buildmyowncabin.com/electrical/3-way-swtich-light-between2.gif
Essentially, I disconnected all of the wires for the 14/3 going to the slave. I then connected the neutral (white) and line (black) in the 14/3 cable to the appropriate wires from the supply (Ground was already appropriately wired), as well as wired up the new switch appropriately (line to the source, load to the the lights, neutral to neutral and ground to ground). I then used the remaining (red) wire in the 14/3 for the traveler (data) up to the slave. At this point, I then had neutral, ground, line and traveler (data) available for the slave switch. If you already have a 3-way setup using conventional switches that you are upgrading to z-wave switches, you should already have all the wires needed to wire it properly without tying to fudge it. This basically sums up how my Leviton switches are wired: http://www.doityourself.com/forum/attachments/electrical-ac-dc/61643d1452984128-z-wave-install-dead-end-3-way-switch-l_sw.jpg
Ok,
I’m dealing with GE switches so they are a little different. But back to the beginning and how I understand the problem. As you know, there are a couple of different ways to wire a three way switch. You can put the load in front of the switches on the line, or after the switches on the neutral if that makes any sense. If your house is wired with the light on the line side of the switch the neutral comes back through all the switches. so there isn’t any problem connecting to a neutral at both switches. The problem is when the lights are wired after the switches on the neutral. There isn’t a path back to the panel without going through the light.
Why do we care, you might ask. GE uses the second (add-on) switch as a momentary contact switch to tell the primary switch that someone wants to change the state of the lights. Because of this, it has to have a clear path back to the panel to complete the circuit without going through the lights.
So the electrician that wired my house put all the lights on the neutral side of the switch so I don’t have a clean neutral path from my add-on switch back to the panel.
What GE does, is they use one traveler (I pick the red one for the sake of consistency) to connect the two switches. Then they want you to pass the line current back through the second traveler back to the first switch. It just loops through the add-on switch. Then they want you to connect your neutral wire to the switch. Problem is I don’t have a neutral.
My thought is that since the line just wraps back through the second traveler back to the main switch, why send the line over in the first place. Just connect it to the main switch directly, and instead of using the second traveler to bring the line voltage back from the secondary, let it be the neutral and use it to tie the add-on switch back into the neutral at the primary box.
Does that make any sense?
I wish I could get to visio and make another drawing to help make it makes more sense.
A Diagram of how your existing switches are wired from the source to the light would probably be helpful. Are you saying your switches are wired so that when you turn the switch off, it is actually cutting the neutral to the light, and that you still have an energized line at the light?
I’m not familiar with the GE switches, but it sounds almost as if they are similar to the Leviton switches - the remote switch needed a line, neutral, ground and traveler.
Every way that I’ve found to wire standard 3-way switches would be fairly easy to re-wire to allow for neutral and line to be present at all locations.
I believe that is the way GE expects it to be wired. But the wiring in my house is the opposite. My switches cut the line (hot wire) so when a switch is thrown, there is not any power getting to the light.
The thing about the GE add-on switch is that it only gets two wires connected to it, the traveler and the neutral. Since there isn’t a “clean” neutral at my switches, it doesn’t work right. The GE lights just use a wire nut to joint the line and load wires together and send them back to the main switch.
So again, my idea is to just not send the line over to the add-in switch, freeing up the line and the return wire to be used to be repurposed as a neutral.
Current code for new wiring should cut the hot to the lights. Make sure that you can’t just switch the switch and the addon positions to get what you need.
