Lighting Circuit and Switch Wiring

JohnW2 · 4 Sep 2014

morpheus83uk said:
Yes I thought that but I wasn't too sure. I will do some testing and find out what's where and then wire it up. Hopefully I can make it alright either that find a qualified electrician to sort it out.

As I and others have said, my greatest concern relates to what other dangerous things may be going on in your installation and, with the best will in the world, I don't think you have the knowledge to be able to ascertain that - and your attempts to correct things could make things more dangerous, rather than less.

We know that whoever wired the switch we have seen made at least one dangerous error - either switching the neutral instead of line/live or using blue as line/live and brown as neutral, either of which is dangerous. The same person who made one of those very basic mistakes may well have done other dangerous things elsewhere in your installation, which may well not be apparent to, or detectable by, you. I therefore can but repeat my advice that you really ought to get an electrician to check out everything, before you attempt to correct anything.

Kind Regards, John

Taylortwocities · 4 Sep 2014

I was wondering what sort of "testing" you were planning to do? And with what.

morpheus83uk · 4 Sep 2014

Testing each core individually with a multimeter to see what is what so what's live neutral and earth and Mark them up and do the same at the light itself and if there is a ceiling rose in place see what them cores are doing...

ban-all-sheds · 5 Sep 2014

JohnW2 said:
I think you're probably being a bit unfair - the OP was effectively directed to the "Wiring Diagrams for Lighting Circuits" sticky, not the wiki.

[is it not about time we got rid of that sticky?]

I've asked admin more than once.

JohnW2 · 5 Sep 2014

ban-all-sheds said:
JohnW2 said:

I think you're probably being a bit unfair - the OP was effectively directed to the "Wiring Diagrams for Lighting Circuits" sticky, not the wiki.
[is it not about time we got rid of that sticky?]

Click to expand...

I've asked admin more than once.

As you presumably know, the most recent post in that sticky is one from Admin dated 26 July 2012:

Admin said:
Please add new infomation to the Wiki. This will be moved into the Wiki in due course:

"Due course" clearly comes slowly. However, I would have thought that we would want the sticky, with all its contents, simply removed, rather than 'moved to the Wiki" (where it would probably merely cause confusion), wouldn't we?

Kind Regards, John

Taylortwocities · 5 Sep 2014

JohnW2 said:
I would have thought that we would want the sticky, with all its contents, simply removed, rather than 'moved to the Wiki" (where it would probably merely cause confusion), wouldn't we?

Agreed

JohnW2 said:
"Due course" clearly comes slowly.

A bit like progress with Tapatalk for this forum

ban-all-sheds · 5 Sep 2014

I imagine William has a day job.

endecotp · 5 Sep 2014

Unless I'm missing something, the "sticky" contains circuits for 2-way switching and shows brown/blue wires; the Wiki has neither.

JohnW2 · 5 Sep 2014

endecotp said:
Unless I'm missing something, the "sticky" contains circuits for 2-way switching and shows brown/blue wires; the Wiki has neither.

It sounds as if you're missing a lot. If you look in the "Two-way lighting" section of the wiki, you'll find a lot of material, and plenty of brown/blue wires. Similarly if you look in the "Two way and intermediate lighting" section. Are you having difficulty navigating around the wiki?

Kind Regards, John

endecotp · 5 Sep 2014

Err... yeah, sorry.

I followed a link to this page:
//www.diynot.com/wiki/Electrics:Lighting-Circuit-layouts
which doesn't have any links to neighbouring pages; you have to follow "Wiki Home", then "Electrics (UK)", then "Lighting and Lamps". Which I should have been able to do, but somehow didn't.

ban-all-sheds · 5 Sep 2014

JohnW2 said:
If you look in the "Two-way lighting" section of the wiki, you'll find a lot of material, and plenty of brown/blue wires. Similarly if you look in the "Two way and intermediate lighting" section.

A lot of the lighting drawings now default to harmonised colours, with options to show non-harmonised.

Not that it should matter - people should not be doing electrical installation work on the basis of just following a colour trail - they should actually understand what's going on, and if they had and were allowed to use cable with orange, purple, and sky blue pink cores, be just as able to install 2-way switching as if they had the regular stuff.

JohnW2 · 5 Sep 2014

ban-all-sheds said:
A lot of the lighting drawings now default to harmonised colours, with options to show non-harmonised.

Indeed - and, a decade after we 'harmonised' that would seem to make sense.

endecotp's comment was, of course that (perhaps because of its age) the section of the wiki he found contained only non-harmonised colours, which probably isn't ideal in 2014.

Kind Regards, John

ban-all-sheds · 5 Sep 2014

However endecotp raises a valid concern.

Whilst it isn't rocket science to go back up the tree and follow another path, it's not obvious that there is, or what is, the structure of the Wiki when you go directly to a particular page.

There is space in the left pane to have something like this displayed:

I'll ask if it can be done.

If not then it might be a useful move to add a list of related pages at the end of (particularly?) the lighting ones.

JohnW2 · 5 Sep 2014

ban-all-sheds said:
However endecotp raises a valid concern. Whilst it isn't rocket science to go back up the tree and follow another path, it's not obvious that there is, or what is, the structure of the Wiki when you go directly to a particular page. ... There is space in the left pane to have something like this displayed: ... I'll ask if it can be done

Yes, that would certainly help.

However, even if one views the tree, endecotp's experience makes me think that it might also be beneficial to find a more appropriate title for the "Lighting Circuits Layout" page - since I couldn't really blame anyone for thinking that subjects like 2-way switching might be covered there.

Kind Regards, John

morpheus83uk · 7 Sep 2014

Just to update you all I have tested everything and the live wires were the brown wires. What happened was whoever put it in just wired it up incorrectly which caused the dim LED's as there was constant current running through them. I have also put up a couple of lights in the garage and sorted out the switching in the living room and all in all a good day.

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Lighting Circuit and Switch Wiring

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