Advice for moving ceiling light fitting

[Tykey]

Hello all. I'm looking for a bit of advice and hoping someone will be able to confirm (or shoot down in flames) what I think is the best way moving a ceiling light fitting.

Here's my situation - I've just moved into a new house, there is an integral garage that has had the back third converted into a utility room. As the front two thirds of the garage are useless for parking a car and I don't need the storage, I'm converting it to a home office.

There is a pendant light that's in the front two thirds which would have been central to the original garage, but is now near to the new partition wall, so I would like to move this to be central in the new office. Hope that all makes sense.

Well I've taken off the rose to have a look at it (photo attached), and can see that there are five cables leading into it. My presumption is that they are:

1) Circuit cable coming in
2) Circuit cable coming out
3) Switch cable
4) A cable to the "new" light, which is in the utility room
5) A cable from the "new" light

Excluding the flex, I have four wires going into N, five into loop, and one into L. I'm presuming that the two additional cables are to and from the new light, as this would have been the most logical place to take the feed from. Is that likely to be correct?

I need to move the fitting about 1.5m. There isn't any extra play in the existing cable to use, so I need to extend it. From reading around I understand the best way to do this would be to use a maintenance free junction box (Ashley J804), which can then be hidden in the void.

My question is can I then just run a twin & earth from that to the new light fitting, or do i need to extend all of the existing cable to the new light position and install a new back plate? If it makes any difference, the new light that will be there just has L/N/E connections.

Hope I've explained it all well enough. Thanks in advance.

 

[Iggifer]

Just take the SL/N/E to the new fitting. You don't need them all.

Unless you particularly want to hide the join, you can just leave the rose where it is, and connect your feed to your new light where the lamp holder is connected and remove that, put the lid back on and you're good to go.

Not as tidy as losing it in the void but no patching up and your cables are all accessible in the future

 

[EFLImpudence]

Or - do that and have two lights in the office.

You would not need two cables (one to and one from) for the utility light (although someone may have done that).

Is their a third something which this cable may supply?

 

[Taylortwocities]

....

 

[Tykey]

Just take the SL/N/E to the new fitting. You don't need them all.

Unless you particularly want to hide the join, you can just leave the rose where it is, and connect your feed to your new light where the lamp holder is connected and remove that, put the lid back on and you're good to go.

Not as tidy as losing it in the void but no patching up and your cables are all accessible in the future

Thanks for the advice. I was torn between patching it and making it look neat, and future-proofing and retaining access for me (or anyone else in future) that might need it. I was leaning towards the neatness, partly because I'm not sure what the wife would say about having an unused rose sat there!

Or - do that and have two lights in the office.

I did consider that, but the OCD in me would mean the second one would need to be the same distance from the wall as the other, and I thought two very off-centre lights might look a bit weird.

You would not need two cables (one to and one from) for the utility light (although someone may have done that).

Is their a third something which this cable may supply?

Hmmm, interesting. I can't think of anything else that would have been taken from it. There aren't any other lights in the utility area.

There is a light next to the front door, with a motion sensor, so perhaps that?

 

[Taylortwocities]

There is a light next to the front door, with a montion sensor, so perhaps that?

Could be, or a smoke alarm.

The easy way is to (power off) remove the brown wire temporarily and see what doesn't work any more!

 

[Tykey]

Could be, or a smoke alarm.

The easy way is to (power off) remove the brown wire temporarily and see what doesn't work any more!

I think my curiosity will get the better of me and I'll give that a go.