adding ceiling lights

[wossie6]

i am thinking of putting in a new ceiling light up at the bottom of my stairs,ive looked at the job all ways,but short of ripping up carpets and floorboards or ripping out stud walls im clueless.but i think i may have a solution but dont know if it is legal or will even work.
i have a ceiling rose at the top of the stairs which is operated by 2 swiches,1 up stairs and 1 down stairs,can i wire up a new ceiling light into the switch i have downstairs as that is where i want the new light fitting,can this be done or do i need to break into the actual ligting cicuit.if its the latter i will just have to forget about the job thanks

 

[alexnic]

These switches at the top / bottom of the stairs are 2-way and will contain live / switchwire & strapwires, you need a Nuetral at the light in order for it to work and it is very unlikely that you will have one in the switch....although not impossible, depending on how the lights were wired, check if there is a seperate joint with 2-black cables together , if not then 'no luck'

 

[wossie6]

thanks could you reply a bit simpler, i understand what im doing but dont understand what you are saying

 

[wossie6]

wiring inside switches is as follows at top of stairs com is red L2 has black and yellow wires L1 hasred and blue wires.at bottom of stairs that i hope to use has com red L2 yeloow L1 has blue
is this what to expect and thefore i have no chance or is this what i am looking for ?

 

[wossie6]

at ceiling rose i have got from the 2 pins flex to bulb( outside )then have a black.3 pins in middle are all red,then last 3 have 2 blacks and flex to bulb

 

[breezer]

is there not a ceiling rose downstairs? you would need to take a cable from either this or the consumers unit. to see how it is done see this

 

[wossie6]

my way of thinking is this if there is live at the switch( L1) and the neutral is (L2)then can i feed these wires from the new light fitting into these on the switch as opposed to doing the above as it would mean ripping things apart to trail new wires down

 

[breezer]

unfortunately wht you rare thinking is wrong. I understand why you think that red live, black neutral, but if that were so when the switcjh is operated it would just go BANG, the black is a switch wire, not neutral. sorry

 

[wossie6]

looks like im going into the attic then and trace my way down.thanx for replies.was hopeing that i could have avoided all this maybe i will give it a miss altogether (days work for one light)not really worh it

 

[breezer]

i thought you wanted the light at the bottom of the satirs, "technically" you should not feed a downstairs light from upstairs, it does not matter which light you feed it from downstairs is there not one nearby?

 

[MANDATE]

Let me see if I can make it a little clearer.
When you have two 2way switches(as against one 1way) to operate a
light, they have to be linked together using a 3 core+earth wire,colours are RED/BLUE/YELLOW.
RED will be COMMON to COMMON
BLUE will be L1 to L1
YELLOW will be L2 to L2.
In addition you still have to have a switch cable from the ceiling rose to one of the 2way switches
This switch cable is 2core+ earth RED/BLACK and in your case it goes to the upstairs switch
RED (live) will go to L2
BLACK (switched live) will go to L1.
Perhaps you can see that whilst there is a live wire at L2 there is no neutral.
Now if you study the ceiling rose the middle block(with reds in) caters for feeding a live to the next rose and likewise the neutral from the next rose returns through the end block (with black wires)
The red 'live' in the switch cable also comes from the middle block, but the 'black' (switched live) returns to a 2 terminal blockat the opposite end to the neutral.
In order for you to get both live and neutral to feed your new light you must use either an existing ceiling rose or you could insert a 3 terminal junction box somewhere in the circuit and take a cable to your new ceiling rose from that








Also in this situation the two 2way switches have to linked