Partial Lighting Failure

We've suddenly lost the power to half of the household lighting (kitchen, bedrooms & bathroom). All the other lights are ok as are the sockets. We have just the one lighting fuse but I have checked all fuses to be on the safe side and they're all ok.

I did fit some new lights in the kitchen last week to existing wiring and they've worked fine until tonight.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Possibly a failed connection in the light you have worked on. You need to safely isolate and check the terminations as a starting point.

Robbo63 said:

We've suddenly lost the power to half of the household lighting (kitchen, bedrooms & bathroom). All the other lights are ok as are the sockets. We have just the one lighting fuse but I have checked all fuses to be on the safe side and they're all ok.

I did fit some new lights in the kitchen last week to existing wiring and they've worked fine until tonight.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Perhaps the new lights in the kitchen should be the first place to look. If the lights are wired as normal i.e. as a radial circuit then it is possible that you have broken that radial link between the kitchen and the next part of the circuit - possibly a loose cable has come out of it terminal causing everything after the kitchen on the link not to work.

You didn't fit downlighters in the kitchen did you?

Thanks Guys. I took the new lights down and found a break in a live cable. Problem solved! Though quite why everything worked fine for a week since installing the new lights is a complete mystery.

If it was the live of the exsisting supply cable then it is possible that it had been weakened or become brittle prior to you disturbing it & then further weakened when retightened into the terminal, to the point of breaking under the load of the lights, thus being ok for a week. If it was a new cable that you installed then it sounds like you probably damaged it when removing the insulation & again further weakened it by screwing it into the terminal, again ok for a while then breaking down under load. Happens to the best of us, don't worry about it.