Unheated garage with lzw31-sn

Digital Lounge
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I’d like to put an lzw31-sn in my unheated attached garage in RI. The spec sheet says down to 32F. It probably doesn’t get that low inside the garage. Has anyone in New England installed one in their garage? What will happen if it gets too cold? Does it stop responding? I assume it will resume normal function when it warms up?

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Welcome to the community :slight_smile:

I don’t have any of my LZW31’s in the garage but I’ve had a NZW30 in my garage (Connecticut) for some years with no hiccups.

I realize the you dimmer is a different design but I can’t see how another 10°F will make much of a difference.

I think when we had that very cold spell a few years ago I had some soda start to freeze. That’s the coldest my garage has been. My garage is also an attached unheated type.

John

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I imagine it’d be fine. The switch may keep itself warmed powering up internals, but mostly electronics love the cold.

Edit: looking to move back to SE Connecticut. I don’t miss the winters.

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I had an LZW30-SN in our garage last winter and it probably got down to around 5f many nights, no issues.

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I’ve got an LZW31-SN in my uninsulated attached garage in SE PA … not quite New England, but, I’m sure the air temp out there hit or dipped below 32 a few times over the winter when my kids would leave the garage door open with now issues encountered.

Besides, I doubt the internals are at much risk in the cold, I’d guess that the plastic probably starts to get more brittle while kept extremely cold and may not hold up to the stress it was certified under. I’ve had paddle based smart switches in my garage for years (this was the first winter for the LZW31-SN) and I’ve never had one fail or misbehave even when it got really, really cold out there.

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