Recent content by Valiante

Perfect. Ordered. Thanks again all!

Excellent, thank you. A bit of amateur Googling turned up this just before you replied, which I think is the same thing. It seems J804 is the key bit for 3&E, am I right?

Something like this? Forgive my ignorance, but how's that different to what's already there, besides the casing? Or is a maintenance free junction box something else? I'd appreciate any recommendations. Thanks!

For now, if I can't take advantage of this newly discovered and convenient connector, I'll just carry on boarding the rest of the loft and tackle the addition of a socket later. The eventual plan, I guess, would be to either spur off the upstairs ring main, or run a new feed from the CU. For...

That makes sense, as the house used to have interlinked smoke alarms, but they were replaced with battery-powered a few years back. I also remember the old fuse board had a circuit labelled "lights & smokes" but it was replaced last year when we had an extension built with a more modern...

I'm boarding my loft, raising the floor. As the floor is going over an old disused aerial booster, I disconnected it first. I had assumed it was somehow spliced into the lighting circuit, but through trial & error at the breaker box I found it was actually using the "downstairs sockets"...

Thanks John. The downstairs lighting circuit is split into two, so it's not massively inconvenient to isolate at the fuse-board. Appreciate your response, cheers.

I should have omitted both the temporary caveat and the reason, because it will most likely become permanent, and I only really wanted to know whether or not joining the wires would be safe. So far only one person has actually answered that question, with everyone else caught up on alternative...

Thanks - this is what I was looking for. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't bypassing a safety feature of the switch by doing this. Yes, tape over the switch would work, but would like totally naff, especially as it's just inside the front door. That said, thanks everyone for your replies :)

Thanks eddieed - a good idea, which I'll keep in mind, but it limits the choice of switch designs one can use. I'm more inclined towards the fuse idea.. is that feasible? An in-line fuse holder in the pattress behind the switch?

I should have said.. it's currently part of a 2-gang switch, so I was considering just replacing it with a 1-gang switch and bypassing the then non-existent switch by joining the wires. I'm not averse to putting an in-line fuse in the pattress box between the two wires, though..?

Would it be ok (read: safe) to bypass a light switch by simply joining the live & switched-live wires behind a switch? Edit: Removed irrelevant information

@xr4x4 - Look, I don't mean to seem crabby. You make a good point, loft insulation could have been topped up, etc. But at this point I was just trying to find out about the joist binders. @17thman - Really? Damn. A previous owner installed a shower, which is where that pipe goes. The...

Possibly, but that wasn't really my question now was it? I'm not interested in reinsulating my loft, or turning it into a room, or decorating it with flowers. I just want to make storing stuff easier.

From what I've since read on other (more active) forums I think this seems to be the most accurate answer. It looks to me, having read the entire internet this evening (or so it feels), that this "beam" is actually a joist binder, and is there to simply prevent the joists from sagging or...