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- 28 Jun 2006
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I've recently bought a house that has, to put it mildly, been put together by a ****witt. The problem I have at the moment is with my kitchen light. There is a 3 core cable coming to the light switch, with black, red and brown cables coming out of it, and an extra red cable twisted onto the red from the 3-core that splits off to power a plug socket underneath it(The twisted section of cable goes directly into the light socket).
Not being sure what was going on I tested all the cables with the multimeter, and figured the reds are live(Not always a guarantee in this house), black is neutral and the brown is earth. Unfortunately when fastening it all back in, the brown was disconnected from the earth connection on the switch, and was floating around the back of the box(I'm 50% sure it wasn't touching anything, but it could have touched the screws fastening the back of the front plate on). The switch is a nickel coated metal switch, with a push-on face plate(I.E. no screws on the front). I checked the switch itself and there is a very clearly defined layer of thick plastic between the cable section and the switch itself. So I'm sure there was no current passing from the live and neutral to the front panel.
When I fastened it all up, it worked fine with no problems. But after a few hours when I turned the light on, I got a fairly substantial shock from the switch. Not enough to harm me, but I had to go sit down for a bit.
Now Im wondering exactly what went wrong, and how I can avoid it in future? Was it just the earth being disconnected that did this?
Not being sure what was going on I tested all the cables with the multimeter, and figured the reds are live(Not always a guarantee in this house), black is neutral and the brown is earth. Unfortunately when fastening it all back in, the brown was disconnected from the earth connection on the switch, and was floating around the back of the box(I'm 50% sure it wasn't touching anything, but it could have touched the screws fastening the back of the front plate on). The switch is a nickel coated metal switch, with a push-on face plate(I.E. no screws on the front). I checked the switch itself and there is a very clearly defined layer of thick plastic between the cable section and the switch itself. So I'm sure there was no current passing from the live and neutral to the front panel.
When I fastened it all up, it worked fine with no problems. But after a few hours when I turned the light on, I got a fairly substantial shock from the switch. Not enough to harm me, but I had to go sit down for a bit.
Now Im wondering exactly what went wrong, and how I can avoid it in future? Was it just the earth being disconnected that did this?