replacing 3 gang, 2 way switch,

[Paulus1902]

I thought this would be simple but it\\\'s not.

I\\\'m replacing the hall 3 gang switch which operates an outside light, the hall light and the landing light. The landing light can also be operated by a switch on the landing.

The existing switch has 5 terminals across the top.
Blue wires go to each of two terminals marked 1W. Yellow wires go to terminals 2W and com. The final terminal has no wire to it.

There are 4 terminals across the bottom. A red wire goes to com, another red wire to 1W which is then connected to a second com terminal. The 4th terminal has no wires.

The new switch has terminals as shown below:-


com L2 L1 com L2

L1 L2 com L1

I have tried to associate the new switch terminals to the old ones but can\\\'t get all lights working. In particular I can\\\'t get the landing light to work from both hallway and landing switches.

Sorry this seems a long question but I thought the more info. the better you would understand.

[electronicsuk]

Paulus1902 wrote:

The existing switch has 5 terminals across the top. Blue wires go to each of two terminals marked 1W. Yellow wires go to terminals 2W and com. The final terminal has no wire to it. There are 4 terminals across the bottom. A red wire goes to com, another red wire to 1W which is then connected to a second com terminal. The 4th terminal has no wires.

The important thing here is to identify which wires are associated with each individual circuit. It sounds as if you have a pair of 3 core + earth cables coming into the switch.

Most likely situation is that one of these cables is dedicated to the two way circuit for the landing light, and this will go the switch that has the 2W terminal connected. Try and trace all three cores back from this switch and you should find they all go into a single grey or white sleeve along with an earth wire.

If that proves to be the case then that only leaves three remaining wires for the other two switches. You've mentioned that a red wire links two terminals, which indicates this is an unswitched supply cable. Yellow and blue will be the switched live to your lights.

Paulus1902 wrote:

The new switch has terminals as shown below:- com L2 L1 com L2 L1 L2 com L1

If that ASCII art is being formatted the way you intended then it seems a bit of an odd way to space the terminals. I assume that in actual fact each switch has an L1 and L2 with a com spaced centrally between the two at the opposite end, and the central switch position has L1/L2 and com vertically flipped? If that makes sense

That being the case, the cable that you have identified as switching the landing light should have the red core wired to com on one of the switches, and the yellow and blue wired to L1 and L2 associated with that same switch.

Link the com terminals of the remaining two switches and also connect the red wire (that previously supplied the linked terminals of the old switch) in here too. The remaining cores should go yellow to 1W of one switch, blue to 1W of the other.

If you post a picture of the wiring on your existing switch then we can better advise you.

__________________
Matthew

"I told you, I only wrote that poem to test my printer!"

[Steve]

The most important thing here:

You have 3 switches. On the back, the terminals are arranged in triangles.

Code:

COM      L1  L2      COM L1 L2      COM      L1 L2

This is the standard arrangement on a 3 gang switch. If you get your head around this you should be ok!