Trouble Replacing Celing Rose / Lights

[DaveAnderson]

Hi all,

I am trying to replace hall and landing lights but I'm having a spot of bother.

The existing ceiling roses have a connector block with eight connectors + 1 earth. Live (*2), Loop (*3) and Earth (*3). All the lights are controlled by two/three switches.

The replacement lights have 4 connectors, L, N, E and one spare. This is why I've come unstuck.

Here's the configuration of the first ceiling rose.
Live = 2 black wires, with a little bit of brown sleeve on it. Both into the same connector. + Live from lightbulb into another connector.
Loop= 3 brown wires all into the same connector.
Neutral = 3. One is blue. Two are grey with a bit of blue sleeve. All into one slot. + the Neutral from the light bulb.
Earth = 3 geen and yellow.

The second ceiling rose has one less of everything. (I think). I stupidly disconnected the wires before checking where they came from!!! I havent checked the upstairs ones but expect they'd be the same.

I would have wired the two black to the live, the 3 blue to the neutral and the 3 green and yellow to the earth. I'm a bit lost for where to put the three brown. Do they go to the spare connector?

Appreciate any help. I switched off the downstairs lights as marked on the mains unit, but found out the hard way all of the lighting circuits need to be off!!! Ouch...so bit reluctant to carry on. I have changed some others recently (two way switch ) but don't remember them being on a loop and both switches work.

Thanks...David

 

[Cremeegg]

Have a look in the Wiki - lots of good coloured diagrams showing wiring for ceiling roses and two way switching.

 

[Steve]

Dave, its easy. Take the wires out of the old fittings, and replace them in the new fittings as follows:

Move ALL THE WIRES
[code:1]FROM TO

live L
Loop spare
neutral N
Earth E[/code:1]

 

[DaveAnderson]

Thanks Steve,

appreciate the fast response

creamegg...I looked at the wikis but the use of the brown wire on the loop was a little confusing. The wikis show black going to neutral and not live. Or use blue with a section of blue sleeve. Hence the confusiuon
(//www.diynot.com/wiki/electrics:lighting:single_way_lighting:tblsnonharm)

unless you can point me in the direction of the right one...Thanks

 

[Steve]

Dave, you have harmonised colours.

Change the colours in the diagrams as follows

RED to BROWN

Black to blue

yellow, blue and red

to

grey black and brown

Though there are harmonised diagrams on the wiki. Somewhere.

However if you stick to the info i gave you above, you wont go far wrong.

 

[ricicle]

However if you stick to the info i gave you above, you wont go far wrong.

You failed to mention that the loop wires are not spare but still need to be connected together in a seperate connector. Spare would imply to me, if I were a novice, that they were not needed and could be left dangling in the wind.

 

[Steve]

You failed to mention that the loop wires are not spare but still need to be connected together in a seperate connector. Spare would imply to me, if I were a novice, that they were not needed and could be left dangling in the wind.

My writing spare was in reference to the connector that the OP had called spare.

 

[DaveAnderson]

Steve et al,

Thanks for the advice. The *lights* work fine and dandy and all 3 switches are working

The only issue being I needed extra cable to put the terminator block at the side of the transformer otherwise it wont go flush to the ceiling. But the backplate only has a small hole through which to pull the cable and with two sets of thick grey cable I couldn't get enough through without stripping it back - or drilling a bigger hole in the plate!

I opted for stripping some of the outer sheath back - only problem is its left the earth wires exposed, still with a piece of casing on the end - so you can identify which is the earth, but I'll pop to B&Q tomorrow and get some more casing so I know which is the earth if I ever change the lights.

Big thanks...I'm sure you realise how helpful this forum is

David