Light switch problem...

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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Joined
31 May 2005
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Nottingham
Replacing light switches in the house and hit a snag, annoying as changed all the others without problem.

Tried switch elsewhere and works OK.

Will try to break it down as simple as I can.

One bulb in the hallway, one bulb at the top of the stairs.

Double switch downstairs, one switch controls hallway light.

The other controls the one at the top of the stairs. The switch at the top of the stairs should control the upstairs light only.

What is happening now is the switches have become messed up, controlling wrong light, if one is on, you cannot turn off the other.

I have screwed up, I know but what is the problem, the L1, L2 cable positions in the switches? How do I narrow it down?

Thanks.
 
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Best going from first principles really. List out the wires you have at each point and aim for a diagram.

You do know which wire is which in the cavities right? Like, switched live, etc? Which ones go to fittings?

Yes the issue is with L1 and L2... And which wires you've put in them.
 
You probably have 2 wires the wrong way around.. but which two I'm not sure

I would suggest definitely taking pictures beforehand and labelling if you can next time
 
Very likely be L1 and L2 mixed up for the two-way switching. Presumably you didn't take photos before hand, so best just to change one cable over at a time.

So just at 1 of the light switches, swap your L1 and L2 round - test both switches and see if working as intended. There's only going to be a few combinations you could've done it :p
 
this is an easy fix for an electrician, it sounds like you have messed up the loop wire, this is the small wire that loops from side to the other it should be in the com part of the switch and attached to the permanent live and loop out if there is one there.
it sounds like you have that attached to the two switched lives
 
Many thanks for the replies, sorry not replied sooner.

Despite taking pictures, I had obviously cocked up the wire layout but really, I had made it more difficult than it needed to be.

I used a multimeter on each switch so I knew which was the "live". Once you knew this, it was easy as there were only 2 other cables so trial and error was easy to guess which was the correct load wire going to the other switch. Get one switch working properly, then goto the other and go from there.

I learnt a lot in the many hours it took me.

The upstairs switch does not have its own "live" feed, that comes from the downstairs switch which makes sense to me now.

For anyone in the future having problems after replacing switches, best advice I can give is disconnect both switches completely then work out your live and go from there.

I have now labelled the wires so I know which is live and L1/L2.

I did **** up though as I wired the 2 gang switch the wrong way round so left and right button are not as I want but easy fix, just switch the L1/L2 positions to their opposite numbers.
 
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Glad you got it sorted. An electrician may have a quicker way of solving this, but I too start from scratch and identify each wire when this sort of thing happens.
 
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