Light switch problem...

[Gimpymoo]

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.

 

[Gimpymoo]

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.