switch for light

[mole320]

ok this is referring back to my previous post //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=139029&highlight=

my lightswitch came delivered this morning, its a 1 gang two way lightswitch, now on the switch it has to 3 terminals- common at the top, L1 on the left and L2 on the right, plus an earth terminal. i am replacing my garage plug in strip lights with this light switch,

i have an switched FCU with a 3 amp fuse which supplies my outdoor PIR light, and im going to connect the light switch to the FCU.

i am just looking for some advice on how to wire the light switch up to the FCU and the strip lights, e.g what terminal/s do i connect the wires to.

Many thanks

 

[Taylortwocities]

Are you sure you should be doing this? This is so elementary..

OK, here goes:

Run Cable1 from FCU (load terminals) to switch

Brown wire in FCU to the L terminal the other end to Com in the switch
Blue wire in FCU to the N terminal, the other end to a piece of chock block this will go in the switch box - it DOES NOT connect to the switch!
Earth conductor to earth in the FCU. the other end to a piece of chock block this will go in the switch box

Now, take the plug off the cable that goes to your flourescent light.
Brown wire (or maybe it will be red) goes to L1 on the switch
Blue wire (or black) to the neutral choc block in the switch box
earth conductor to the earth choc block in the switch box.

That's it

 

[mole320]

lol ok Thanks very much for your help, you cant explain it any easier than that!

 

[Space cat]

Here's your first problem: Is the FCU fed from a ring? If it is then you can only connect your new light switch to the load side of the FCU. This means that your garage strip lights will go off if you switch off the outdoor PIR light.

The most elegant way to do this is to have a second FCU just for the strip lights but it might not be that easy. If the first FCU is directly on the ring, you can add another one into the ring but if it's on a spur you're stuck because you can't spur a second one off it.

An alternative is to use a single, unswitched FCU to supply both sets of lights. Then you connect each switch/light combination to the load side of the FCU in the way Taylortwocities has described. You could even use a two gang switch, one for the strip lights and one for the outdoor light, but I would want a switch with a neon on it for outdoor lights.