the_jinj said:
It's great following diagrams but if you don't know why or how it's working (or not) how do you fix problems.
Best to draw out what you have, the connections etc and work through it - that way you can adjust etc as needed to get a good working system.
That's what I did in the end.
In the old switch, the red from the red-black-earth cable went into the slot from which emanated the first strap wire. That’s how I figured out that the ‘live’ (inverted commas in case it isn’t actually Live
) supplied all four switches, the other three via the straps. And though the old switch’s A, B and whatever didn’t relate to anything else, it seemed sensible that ‘live’ would go to a terminal labelled L.
Hence, each switch having its own ‘live’ input, it then just needed an output -- call it ‘neutral’ (hell, call it Marmite if you like
). That obviously couldn’t be another one labelled L (that is, not the L2’s), so it had to be the C ones.
So it seems that the only error in what I've now got is the red, the... live? ... going to L1 instead of C, and strapping together the L1’s rather than the C’s (and the 'switched lives' go to the L1's instead). Is that right -- swap them around?
L1 and L2 shouldn't be linked together in the same switch - I guess that's what RF was getting at - is it possible your old strap wire was linking to your intermediate switch?
Of course, which is why I wrote:
Extract the wire from the cable and, measuring against the switch, cut more than enough to reach from one L1 to the next. Strip the ends and link 'em up, L1 to L1 across the switches.
If it was me and I was going to use the same cabling and none was marked or clear, I'd bell out the cables,
Nope, no idea.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bell out
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bell
'Flare' out? How would that help? Connect to a bell? Not sure how that would tell me anything either.
Please translate!
correctly mark them as switch wires
Is 'switch wires' something special too, or do you mean which switch (of the four) they relate to? But... the latter doesn't seem to matter. So yes, I'm afraid I'm serious. I’ve just spent several minutes trying to get a definition of 'switch wire', first checking dictionaries (briefly, didn’t really expect that to work, but, well, both
words are English...), then a Google search (then two more, adding 'glossary' and then 'electrical'). A search of this forum brought no answers either, neither for both words together nor for 'all terms'. So if you can find anywhere online that tells you what a 'switch wire' is, please link me to it.
I get the gist: if you don’t know what a wire is, find out. Sorry, but I’m none the wiser how.