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Hi all, I have a new question for you
We're looking to replace our old outside front lights with PIR ones. Tonight I wanted to check the wiring behind the light switch to see what we're dealing with. And I'm a tad confused hence this post.
The light switch in question is a 3-gang.
So, this is what we get with the front cover off (it's an unusual design of switch, I'd be interested to know how old roughly it is):
And with the next bit off, we get the interesting stuff:
Now just in case it's not clear from the above, the middle switch has nothing connected at the bottom, just the two red wires connected in the top.
There is also a black wire just cut short, visible (just) between the two red wires at the green wire, further back where it comes in from the wall.
You can probably guess my question, but... what is the middle switch doing, as it is simply connected at the COM terminal, to the rightmost switch?
In other words, why isn't the red wire from the cable going directly into the rightmost switch instead?
Also, is any of this going to cause us problems for fitting our PIR lights? (They will be running off the rightmost switch, which consequently will have to be switched on all the time of course).
This is my first 'experience' with a 3-gang switch and because the middle one wasn't working I expected it to have an old rubber wire connected somewhere or somesuch... but not this.
We're looking to replace our old outside front lights with PIR ones. Tonight I wanted to check the wiring behind the light switch to see what we're dealing with. And I'm a tad confused hence this post.
The light switch in question is a 3-gang.
- The leftmost switch is a 2-way switch operating the living room lights (it has an 'opposite' 2-way switch at the other side of the room).
- The rightmost switch operates a porch light and two outside lights. (The two we're looking to replace with PIRs). With this switch on, all three lights come on of course.
- The middle switch... has never seemed to do anything.
So, this is what we get with the front cover off (it's an unusual design of switch, I'd be interested to know how old roughly it is):
And with the next bit off, we get the interesting stuff:
Now just in case it's not clear from the above, the middle switch has nothing connected at the bottom, just the two red wires connected in the top.
There is also a black wire just cut short, visible (just) between the two red wires at the green wire, further back where it comes in from the wall.
You can probably guess my question, but... what is the middle switch doing, as it is simply connected at the COM terminal, to the rightmost switch?
In other words, why isn't the red wire from the cable going directly into the rightmost switch instead?
Also, is any of this going to cause us problems for fitting our PIR lights? (They will be running off the rightmost switch, which consequently will have to be switched on all the time of course).
This is my first 'experience' with a 3-gang switch and because the middle one wasn't working I expected it to have an old rubber wire connected somewhere or somesuch... but not this.