Hope I can make this clear.
Had a domestic disaster today with a shower overflow. My fault; didn’t check connections properly after descaling the head.
Water flows off bath cill, under splashback and into ceiling void from where it escapes through light fitting in kitchen/utility. Lighting rose bridged and switch shorted so light won’t turn off. Run out to garage & isolate relevant circuit. All safe to commence drying out operation.
Had to break the rose to get at fixings. Now I’m reasonably OK with DIY electrics but wiring looks odd. As expected the lighting circuit is looped through with appropriate live and neutral connections. The odd bit is the switched feed cable. Rather than the usual 2 core red (or red/black with sleeving) the cable is 3 core red, yellow & blue. Red is clearly the live connection to the switch and yellow, sleeved red, is the switched live feeding the bayonet. The mystery is the blue, connected to the neutral side of the main circuit.
Time to check the switch, a two way pair wired for single use controlling the subject light in the utility and the external bulkhead light by the back door. This is the bit I’m not sure about. The red feed and yellow switched live for the utility are as I’d expect. The feed (COM) terminal on the utility switch is however connected ‘bridged’ to that for the outside light with a neatly trimmed 3cm length of red core. The switched side is connected to the light's red feed with it’s neutral (black) neatly choc-blocked to the blue providing a return path to the rose for the outside light.
It’s all neatly done and I cannot see any obvious hazard but (a) am I missing something (b) does it comply with the regs?
Any advice gratefully received.
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It all looks somewhat unconventional to me - but why would the electrician go to the effort of putting in three-core cable rather than twin?
It obviously works, from a wiring perspective, with lives attached to lives in sensible places, and neutrals attached to neutrals.
You could try posting on the screwfix forum where you might get a sensible response (provided you can filter out the "you shouldn't be touching it mate" responses).
Otherwise, if it were me, I'd just replace the parts; I cannot see any obvious hazard.
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It seems fine, to me. A neat way to arrange a neutal for the o/s light. From examining the lighting circuit of our house I have concluded that the original installers seem to use any old bits to make the circuit. I'm impressed that you've got red sleeving on the switched live!
You should have an earth wire running from rose to switch as well.
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Thanks guys.
Replacement rose now fitted and all working. Looking at it again everything is properly secured and, with earths where they should be it would fail safe (tripping the circuit breaker) if anything went wrong.
Earthing is as MJM describes.
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Electrical Trouble - Mapmaker
