Is there an electrician in the house?

VonClinkerhofen · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:24

I bought a light from IKEA yesterday for my living room. I switched power off at mains. And wired and fitted it to the ceiling in the same way that the old one was ...I think. When I have switched the power source back on at the box the light came on instantly and it won't switch on or off at the wall. So I now have 24 hour lighting.

The instructions from IKEA say "if you have any problems ring an electrician" (helpful!).

So what I want to know is...

a) Is it it something I've done?

b) Or is it the light fitting?

c) Surely it's not the wiring in my house cos the last light didn't do this?

Nitefly · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:26

Let me be the first to say there should be an electrical forum at this rate

Tomsk · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:56

A rather enlightening day on the forums today.

VonClinkerhofen said:
...I think.

That's your problem.
To fix it you'll need a meter and enough courage to find out which wires are live as you try the switch.
Or call out an electrician.

VonClinkerhofen · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:58

Tomsk said:
That's your problem.
To fix it you'll need a meter and enough courage to find out which wires are live as you try the switch.
Or call out an electrician.

So what your saying is..I've wired it up wrong...so I can just swap them round and it should work

paradigm · 20 Mar 2006 at 17:01

You appear to have bypassed the switch in the circuit. Seems like you have fed a constant live rather than a live through a switch.

Re-wiring is DEFINATELY needed.

wolvotim · 20 Mar 2006 at 17:02

Sound like you’ve wired the permanent live in to the switched live of the light. In the old light fitting you should have had 3 twin&earth cables coming in and 4 separate connection blocks. There should be a “neutral” block for the neutrals, a “loop” block which is for the permanent incoming and outgoing live of the lighting circuit and a permanent live to the switch, a “live” block for the switched live back from the switch and the brown feed wire to the actual light bulb and finally an “earth” block which all the earth wires go into.

If I remember correctly the lights that come from Ikea have a live, neutral, and earth block but no block for the “loop”. So im thinking that you may have put all the red wires into the live block making the light permanently live.

To rectify this you will need to get your self a connector block to connect the “in and out” permanent live of the lighting circuit and the permanent live down to the switch. Then connect only the “switched live” that comes back from the switch into the live connector of the light.

Hope this makes sense

lordedmond · 20 Mar 2006 at 17:04

VonClinkerhofen said:
I bought a light from IKEA yesterday for my living room. I switched power off at mains. And wired and fitted it to the ceiling in the same way that the old one was ...I think. When I have switched the power source back on at the box the light came on instantly and it won't switch on or off at the wall. So I now have 24 hour lighting.

The instructions from IKEA say "if you have any problems ring an electrician" (helpful!).

So what I want to know is...

a) Is it it something I've done?

b) Or is it the light fitting?

c) Surely it's not the wiring in my house cos the last light didn't do this?

You have connected it across the feed and not the switched line ( could be the odd black wire ( should have some red tape on it )

or get a sparks in

VonClinkerhofen · 20 Mar 2006 at 17:19

wolvotim said:
Sound like you’ve wired the permanent live in to the switched live of the light. In the old light fitting you should have had 3 twin&earth cables coming in and 4 separate connection blocks. There should be a “neutral” block for the neutrals, a “loop” block which is for the permanent incoming and outgoing live of the lighting circuit and a permanent live to the switch, a “live” block for the switched live back from the switch and the brown feed wire to the actual light bulb and finally an “earth” block which all the earth wires go into.

If I remember correctly the lights that come from Ikea have a live, neutral, and earth block but no block for the “loop”. So im thinking that you may have put all the red wires into the live block making the light permanently live.

To rectify this you will need to get your self a connector block to connect the “in and out” permanent live of the lighting circuit and the permanent live down to the switch. Then connect only the “switched live” that comes back from the switch into the live connector of the light.

Hope this makes sense

Thanks

*reaches for the Yellow Pages*

Werewolf · 20 Mar 2006 at 17:53

wolvotim said:
If I remember correctly the lights that come from Ikea have a live, neutral, and earth block but no block for the “loop”. So im thinking that you may have put all the red wires into the live block making the light permanently live.

To rectify this you will need to get your self a connector block to connect the “in and out” permanent live of the lighting circuit and the permanent live down to the switch. Then connect only the “switched live” that comes back from the switch into the live connector of the light.

Hope this makes sense

Sounds like every light fitting I've bought from anywhere, none seem to come with the 4 block connector that most houses use for most light fittings.

Mickey_D · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:40

Good Lord you folks have screwed up electrics!!

Over here we have the hot, the neutral, and the earth.

At the switch all we do is put the hot on one side and the light on the other side of the switch. Connect the two neutrals together and put both earths under the green screw.

At the light we put hot to hot, neutral to neutral, and put the earth under the green screw. Voile'. Done deal.

Your three phase system needs to go the way of the dinosaurs. Any time a light fixture has more than three wires in it, there's just WAY too much redundant stuff in there!!

Luke284 · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:44

three phase is only used to get into the house, only one phase is actually used within the house. only big industrial building have three phase supply to power the heavy duty stuff

Trigger · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:48

Mickey_D said:
Good Lord you folks have screwed up electrics!!

Over here we have the hot, the neutral, and the earth.

At the switch all we do is put the hot on one side and the light on the other side of the switch. Connect the two neutrals together and put both earths under the green screw.

At the light we put hot to hot, neutral to neutral, and put the earth under the green screw. Voile'. Done deal.

Your three phase system needs to go the way of the dinosaurs. Any time a light fixture has more than three wires in it, there's just WAY too much redundant stuff in there!!

They're not redundant though are they. You just switch your supply behind the switch which I feel makes it more confusing. If we wanted to, we could have one set of wires coming in to the light fitting and in some cases it is still done that way via a four terminal junction box before the fitting. You just stick with your crappy 110V system and we'll stick with ours

Adam_151 · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:48

Mickey_D said:
Your three phase system needs to go the way of the dinosaurs. Any time a light fixture has more than three wires in it, there's just WAY too much redundant stuff in there!!

We don't generally have 3 phase in houses, generally most houses have a single phase supply, we 'loop in' at the light fitting (the feed is taken from the breaker to each light in turn, and a wire from the switch meets them there, the two neutral feed wires are connected to neutral on the fitting, the two lives (hots) are connected to one of the cores to the switch, and the other wire from the switch is connected to the live (hot) of the fitting. Simple... well until people who don't know whats what play with it and the switch gets connected so it shorts out the supply...

The popularity of these fancy fittings with very little room in them means many electricians prefer to do the looping it at a switch, or a junction box

Werewolf · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:50

mickey as Luke says, we use single phase in domestic situations.

The reason for the switched live and the perminant live, is I beleive due to the way our "ring" circuits are setup in U.K. installations, it means you only need one set of tails to the fuse box for any circuit, and I guess makes it realtively flexible.

It's an odd system, but it seems to work, and I suspect has it's roots in some arcane installation

paul@ · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:52

I recommend the OP calls a electrican, I suspect the loop cable is missing.

Mickey_D · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:53

Adam_151 said:
The popularity of these fancy fittings with very little room in them means many electricians prefer to do the looping it at a switch, or a junction box

Exactly. Keep the ring in the wall where it belongs and only take the switched wires to the appliance being switched. There is absolutely no reason to run unswitched live wires to a lamp fixture......

Mickey_D · 20 Mar 2006 at 19:59

Werewolf, it sounds much the same as the system we use, just a little different as to where you join the next section of a ring at when it comes across an outlet or a light switch.

In the US, there's one trio of wires that goes from the breaker box into the wall. It then comes across say a wall outlet. It is connected to the wall outlet, then the next segment of the same circuit is connected at the same spot. It then goes on to the next junction box (in this example) which happens to be a light switch. It is paralleled at the switch to continue on to the next wall socket. Only the switched live and the neutral are continued up to the actual light fixture itself.

The ONLY time I could see running the ring circuit up to the light fixture is if the circuit also supplies the upstairs, and it is physically shorter to do it that way.

But to run unswitched live wires up into a lighting fixture (to me) is just nonsensical...... :confused:

Adam_151 · 20 Mar 2006 at 20:12

In the UK, we generally keep our socket and light circuits separate

Actually for sockets we have something very perculiar called a ring final circuit, it starts from a 32A breaker and is run in 2.5mm² cable (rated at 20A) and the last socket is connected back to the same breaker. It is an antiquated arrangement that if proposed today would probably never get approved

Jumpingmedic · 20 Mar 2006 at 20:15

Nitefly said:
Let me be the first to say there should be an electrical forum at this rate

There probably isn't for the same reason theres no medical forum

Trigger · 20 Mar 2006 at 20:19

I can't imagine the mess of wires behind the switches on your electrical system when you get into stuff like two way switching- it must be like a rat's nest

Most lighting circuits over here are wired as radial now though and terminates at the final lighting point instead of the CU and IIRC it's only larger installations which have lighting rings. Onl'y downside to radial circuits though is you can't run spurs of them whereas with a ring final, you can