hey everyone..

i think i already know the answer to this question but i thought i would check...

this might be a little hard to explain and create a picture so bare with me...

My fathers g/f has just had her bungelow rewired a few months back... and today i've been adding a floodlight for the back garden to the lighting circuit,

There was already an outside light on the back door, the front door and one on the side of the house near the back door. the side and back lights are connected to the same switch which is a 2 gang switch... the other switch here being for the kitchen light... the front door light is also on a two gang switch and the other switch here is for the hallway light

so my plan was to chop a junction box into the light circuit put a 3 gang switch into the kitchen and run a live loop to it from the junction box and a bit of flex out to the floodlight...

However when i got into it i noticed something very strange in the other wiring... the electrician had bridged the common connections in the 2 gang light switch... so the live from the kitchen celing rose to the switch also fed the live of the other switch... the other side of this switch then went to a junction box in the loft and then to flex to the light... there was another cable to this junction box with only the blue wire connected to the flex to the light, the brown wire had been cut off... this wire went across the loft and to another junction box which was for the front door light... inside again the brown wire had been cut off and the blue connected to the netural for the light... i then checked the light switch for the hallway/front light and found the same again... the live from the celing rose for the hallway light to the switch was then bridged across to the switch for the front door light... then up to the junction box... i forgot to check where the neutral connection actually went back to... but obviously it must have one to function...

is this common practice or did the electrician take shortcuts ? if it is why would u need to do this ? i've always wired lighting circuits as one length of cable from the fuse board with celing rose or junction boxes along the cable with live loop switches.... never seen this before...

answers greatly appriciated

hi maxpaddy to the forum.

the linked "C" common is normal. as for the rest of it, it's a little hard to think what you actually mean. tbh, it doesn't sound right but i wouldn't like to comment any further without seeing it.

my main concern at the moment is what you intend to add to the lighting circuit. when you say "flood light" you would by any chance be talking about a 500Watt halogen light would you?

hey rich thanks for replying,

i dont know of a better way of explaining it the most confusing part is the 5 metre run of cable between two junction boxes but in this cable only the blue wire is used but i dont like the way it looks so im gonna change it anyway, i see no reason why the junction boxes for both front and back lights cant go into the lighting circuit wired just like the other celing roses... power in, power out to other lights, switch loop and light bulb..

as for the flood light.... erm.... yes is this not good ? i figured there are 7 other bulbs on this circuit never carrying more then 60W each and you are allowed upto 1100W right ? so 920W but i guess u have to allow for the house owner adding higher bulbs or wanting light fittings with more then 1 bulb but how much planning for the future do you do in these things ?

if this is two much then.... for the loft light the electrician added a fused point into the ring main and connected a 5 ft strip light to it... would it be better to reconnect this light to the lightiing circuit and then use the fused point for the flood light.... if yes then is it ok to still run lighting cable to a light switch in the kitchen for this light ?

regards

mark

The lighting wiring method you descibe was popular 40 years ago. You wired in single core (or single + e) cables, looping the neutral between roses and lives between switches. This caused a lot of hum that could be picked up by electronic apparatus. Current methods keep cores together so that stray fields are minimised.

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