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- 15 Sep 2018
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Hey all. Was roped into changing a light fitting for in-laws, thought it would be simple but I'm a bit concerned by what I've seen.
Both the original fitting and the replacement are both metal. The new one has a 3 core cable so needs earthed. The original only has two wires in the original flex but I noticed it has a little collar that looks like it was for earthing the fitting but there's no wire to it. Can't tell if it was removed or never there. There's no labelling to say if it's double insulated or not.
Thing is the wiring in the ceiling makes no sense to me but I don't know enough to know if it's dangerously incompetent and I should be worried or if it's just a bad, but safe, job from the early 80s.
There's 3 sets of wires going to one of those plastic connector blocks - 2 black, 1 red. The red is permanently live, the left-most black is switched live and the middle then seems to be neutral, so no earth.
As can be seen on the photo the brown is going to the neutral and blue to the switched live. It does work and I guess it doesn't matter because it's going to a switched live.
As an added bit of fun, while I was peering into the ceiling wiring to see if there was an earth cable just tucked away I saw an exposed bit of copper cable and thought "oh that's probably the earth". Thankfully I checked before touching it because it's permanently live too.
So I'm looking for some advice. Does this sound slightly poor but ok, or dangerous and I should make the in-laws get their wills in order (or get a sparky out to fix it I guess).
Cheers
Both the original fitting and the replacement are both metal. The new one has a 3 core cable so needs earthed. The original only has two wires in the original flex but I noticed it has a little collar that looks like it was for earthing the fitting but there's no wire to it. Can't tell if it was removed or never there. There's no labelling to say if it's double insulated or not.
Thing is the wiring in the ceiling makes no sense to me but I don't know enough to know if it's dangerously incompetent and I should be worried or if it's just a bad, but safe, job from the early 80s.
There's 3 sets of wires going to one of those plastic connector blocks - 2 black, 1 red. The red is permanently live, the left-most black is switched live and the middle then seems to be neutral, so no earth.
As can be seen on the photo the brown is going to the neutral and blue to the switched live. It does work and I guess it doesn't matter because it's going to a switched live.
As an added bit of fun, while I was peering into the ceiling wiring to see if there was an earth cable just tucked away I saw an exposed bit of copper cable and thought "oh that's probably the earth". Thankfully I checked before touching it because it's permanently live too.
So I'm looking for some advice. Does this sound slightly poor but ok, or dangerous and I should make the in-laws get their wills in order (or get a sparky out to fix it I guess).
Cheers