Swapping a dual dimmer to normal light switch

[Semple]

So our kitchen/diner has two zones for lighting, and the previous owner seems to have loved dimmer switches. So i'm looking at replacing these with normal light switches.

Here is the current dimmer. Each "switch" has 2 brown wires coming in, and then there is a thinner brown wire that goes between the tilde/arrow symbol - i presume this is effectively a com port.

The new switch has just com and 1way/2way ports. As the kitchen/diner lights are only controlled by this outlet, i'm going on the assumption that they only need to be wired into the 1way port.

However if i miss out the little brown wire that was between the two tilde/arrow ports , one side of the light switch doesn't work.

Do i just connect this wire between the two com ports on the switch. So effectively the comm port will have 2 wires, whilst the 1way port has just the one?

 

[SimonR]

YES

 

[Seearbe]

Yes - the brown wire that is joining the two is the live main. Without it, you just has a bulb, a switch but no battery on the other circuit.

 

[Semple]

Thanks both, it just threw me how thin and feeble it was. If it was continuing the live I would have thought it would have been similar thickness.

 

[Seearbe]

Thanks both, it just threw me how thin and feeble it was. If it was continuing the live I would have thought it would have been similar thickness.

Sounds like maybe you should replace it then. You should really be using a 1.5mm^2 wire on the whole circuit otherwise you risk overheating.

Is it earthed too? I see the earth screw is fully screwed in on the old dimmer which suggests the switch isn't earthed (unless you loosened the screw off to remove the earth cable and then tightened it back up again, which would just be a bit of a weird thing to do). Unearthed metal switches aren't the best idea!

 

[Semple]

Sounds like maybe you should replace it then. You should really be using a 1.5mm^2 wire on the whole circuit otherwise you risk overheating.

Is it earthed too? I see the earth screw is fully screwed in on the old dimmer which suggests the switch isn't earthed (unless you loosened the screw off to remove the earth cable and then tightened it back up again, which would just be a bit of a weird thing to do). Unearthed metal switches aren't the best idea!

Thanks yeah I think I'll replace it with thicker guage wire. Yeah doesn't look like the faceplate was ever earthed, the backbox is. But as the new faceplates are also metal, I'll earth them as well.