Question: This outlet is two rocker switches. Left controls my bathroom light (4), right controls my bathroom fan (3). I am trying to install a timer switch so the fan is only on for ~30 min at a time.

The instructions insist a neutral wire is connected to the switch.

My house was built in the late 60s. Many of the wires have paint on them which makes things difficult.

The wire nut under (1) contains wires which come from the wall and don't connect to the existing switches. They are an egg-cream color which I believe is white + age. All the other white looking wires are black wires that have paint on them. I think what's going on with the wire nut in 2 is that the hot line from the wall is joined with two other small wires, one for each switch.

My thought is that (1) is the neutral wire, and I should undo the existing wire nut, add an additional wire which will goto my new switch as a neutral, then wire nut them all together.

Is that correct? Is there anything else I can do to verify this? What's the risk if I'm wrong?

(note 3 is the actual timer switch, once I realized I didn't know what the neutral was I took the pictures and then put it back how it started)

(edit: additional note, this bathroom has a small room for shower/toilet, where this picture is, connected to the area with two sinks... basically the other side of the wall in the same position is a gfci outlet by the sink)

[![Wiring Picture](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ripze.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ripze.jpg)

Answer: 
They also make timers that don't use neutral wires. Same company, same shelf. 

They wire up exactly like your old switch, and are guaranteed to work anywhere a plain switch works. 

These have a dial you twist and set to the exact time you want, and a spring and clockwork mechanism makes them unwind. They come in any range from 5 minutes to 12 hours, with or without a "stay on indefinitely" position. (At the lodge I use the ones *without* the "stay on" function, because the point is to stop people from leaving things turned on.)
There are only a few ways this can go
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There are only four ways switches ever get wired:

1. Power-to-the-switch, where always-hot and neutral are brought to the switch location, the switch breaks the hot, then switched-hot and neutral are brought from the switch location to the outlet location
2. An "old-style" *switch loop*, where always-hot and neutral are brought to the switched outlet, with neutral terminating there, but always-hot carrying on in another cable to the switch location, which breaks hot, leaving the switched-hot to run back with the always-hot from the switch to the outlet
3. A "new-style" switch-loop, which works as before, save for the fact that neutral is run on from the switched outlet to the switch location and capped off at the switch (since a Plain Old Light Switch has no use for neutral, but fancy doodads like dimmers, timers, wifi/... switches, and occupancy sensors can make productive use of it)
4. Or a *traveller spur*, where either always-hot or switched-hot *and* the travelers of a 3-way setup (with multiple switches controlling the light) are brought from one 3-way location out to the other, instead of having always-hot come in one end of the 3-way and switched-hot come out the other

Since this is a single-pole situation (only one switch controls the fan in question), we can rule out #4. #3 can be ruled out by the lack of any wire colors other than white or black in the box, given that the wiring is done using cables, with their fixed internal color scheme (instead of individual wires in conduit, where one has the power of the rainbow at their disposal). We then rule out #2 in your situation because that requires a white wire to be attached to a hot terminal on a switch, and that's not the case; instead, all the white wires run into a bundle (nut 1), alongside a bunch of bundled black wires (nut 2) (although they're partly masked by white paint/drywall-compound splatter), which means we have case 1, and the bundled white wires must be the neutrals.

So, you can add your new timer's neutral to the existing bundle, alongside all the existing wires. Note that you may need to upsize to a larger wirenut to do this if the existing wirenut is too small for the new bundle of wires.