Light Fitting advice

Rich55

Rich55

Rich55

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Joined
25 Mar 2016
Posts
17
Following getting the ceiling plastered in the kitchen I have now been left with 3 sets of cables coming down from the ceiling.

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I have used a circuit tester to try and identify which is the switched live cable and it seems that two of them behave as switched lives, is this correct as I thought only one would be as there is only one switch to control that light.

Also how would I go about wiring the below light fitting, would I just fit all the cables into each or would i need to use junction boxes and then wire from them into the fitting?

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The instructions were non existent with the fitting so any help would be appreciated!
 
What is the dirty white cable in the first pic?

Assuming for a minute that the 3 grey cables are all thats needed...

First you need to turn the power off for the lights at fusebox, then switch the light switch on and test between live and neutral, you should get 1 cable with <1ohm resistance and maybe other cables will test higher say 25-60ohms, due to bulbs being left in, remember which cable is which.

Then turn switch off, the cable with lowest resistance should now be open circuit with switch off, you can switch a few times just to make sure,

For that light fitting you will need 1 extra terminal block for the live loop as there isnt one built into the fitting.

Put all 3 lives (browns) into the extra terminal block,
Put the switch live (blue from the switch cable) into the live terminal of the fitting, mark this with brown tape or sleeving ideally so you can tell which is switch in future.
then put 2 remaining neutrals/blues into the neutral terminal of fitting.

Put all earth together into earth terminal

That fitting has quite a small / shallow base so you will need to be neat with the wiring and push slack cable back up into ceiling to get it to fit flush to ceiling without crushing all the cables in
 
The dirty white one is for an outside light which will no longer be in use.

I did that test you describe but what I found odd was that two of the cables tested at around 60ohms with only one of them at 1ohm. Does this sound right in any setup?

There is some movement on the cables so I should be able to push the cables back in a little bit due to the limited room.
 
Rich55 said:
The dirty white one is for an outside light which will no longer be in use.

I did that test you describe but what I found odd was that two of the cables tested at around 60ohms with only one of them at 1ohm. Does this sound right in any setup?

There is some movement on the cables so I should be able to push the cables back in a little bit due to the limited room.
Click to expand...

Yeah sounds correct - the <1ohm cable is switch, other 2 are reading the resistance of bulbs left in other rooms.
 
So i've tried this today and I don't seem to have much luck!

In the below picture lets say the cables are A, B and C going from left to right.

Cable A - 1ohm resistance from this one no matter which combination of switches are flipped in the Kitchen or Dining Room

Cable B - This seems to have 50-60ohms when the Dining Room light is switched on

Cable C - This seems to have 50-60ohms resistance when the 'Kitchen' light is switched on

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Now I tried connecting them up as described with Cable A as the switched live and could not get the lights to come on, just appears to be no life at all.

Any ideas other than get the sparky to come round next week?
 
"At a guess" cables B & C are loop live neutrals and the 50 - 60 Ohms is reading through other light fittings & cable A is the Live/Switchwire.

I'd bell cable A out to see if it's going down to the switch.

PSA - Always mark up cables before disconnecting. :)
 
you are looking for a reading to change once the switch that controls that light is switched. If none of them do, check behind the switch and make sure everything is still connected.
 
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