Domestic Lighting Circuits

[diydavellis]

I have recently moved in to a ten years old house.
I wanted to put a light in the attic and intended to take a spur from one of the bedroom ceiling roses.
Every house I have lived in before had a supply to one rose, then a spur to the next, with a cable to each switch.
In this house there does not seem to be such a system and each rose seems to become live only when switched on and there seem to be small , possibly single wires to the switches.
Is there a new system nowadays? Help

 

[ban-all-sheds]

So is there a neutral looping from one rose to the next?

What cables are present at the switches?

 

[felix]

Before the loop in system, which is what you expected to find, became the norm, power was routed between junction boxes. From each of these there was one cable to the rose and another to its switch - at least that was the theory!

In practice, there were many ways to cut corners and save on boxes and cable. One bodge was to twist all the earths together OUTSIDE the box. This left a free terminal inside so you could wire two lights and switches into that box. Another trick, particularly useful with multi-gang switches, was to use a single live feed for two switches then run single core cable back from the second switch.


Bodges aside, the old system worked fine but you'll have to tap into a junction box rather than a rose. Follow the wires from the rose and you should find one.

 

[plugwash]

the third way i have seen is to use single+earth and/or double insulated singles

the most common variant of this seems to be to run the live and earth via the switch using single red and earth and to run the neutral directly between the roses using single core double insulated black.

 

[diydavellis]

Thanks plugwash, I think you've described what I've got