connecting outside lights on a new house

[rmd]

Guys - Help/advice appreciated on this one.

I have a brand new house, which has been wired with the new regulation colour wiring. I want to connect 3 outside lights, which have already had the wiring put in place for them. However I am confused as to which wires correspond to live and neutral. The wires coming out of the wall are grey, black and brown, with an unsheathed earth. So question is, where on the lamp do I connect the grey, black and brown??? The brown seems to be a switchable live, so do I connect both the grey and black to the neutral????

I'm stumped, so any help appreciated.

Rich

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] brought next idea :

That has been wired up in the new three phase colours. Best way forward would be to use brown as brown or live, plus get hold of some blue and some green/yellow sleeving. Sleeve both ends of the grey with the green/yellow and use for an earth. Sleeve both ends of the black with blue and use as a neutral.

[Andy Hall]

The cable that they have used is that which is now used for wiring either three phase or for wiring two way lights. In the latter application, the conductors are supposed to be sleeved with blue to indicate neutral and the brown should be the switched live.

What you have is probably down to laziness - they should have used T&E cable with brown,blue and bare copper sleeved green/yellow.

I think that your options are either to trace out the wires or to get the developer to send the electrician and get him to sort it out. I suppose that it's not practical to get the cable replaced because it's buried in plaster etc.? Therefore as a minimum it should be sleeved with blue and brown as appropriate.

[ARWadsworth]

Look inside the switch to see what is connected there. Generally the grey would be the neutral using these colours.

Adam

[ARWadsworth]

Expensive laziness at that. The cable costs more.

Some outside lights with PIRs need permanent live, switched live and neutral to allow a manual overide so I frequently lay a 3 core and earth to them.

Adam

[John Rumm]

Neat idea at the light end of things, but how do you wire it at the switch/rose end though? ISTM that if you take the 3&E from a rose position "loop in" style, it makes getting the switched live tricky, and if you take it from a switch position you probably don't have a neutral.

[j*]

[John Rumm]

Just to add, you don't know what you are talking about.

[ARWadsworth]

3&E from any loop in fitting to a switch with a 3&E to the outside light. Just a branch off the lighting circuit.

On a rewire/newbuild I would however just take live, neutral and earth to the switch, do the connections there and then run 2&E or 3&E to the fittings.

My favourite is 2 gang switches when one switch feeds wall/outside lights and the other a ceiling rose with a loop in system. Just drop a 3&E for the ceiling switch wire, export the neutral to the switch and use a 2&E to the wall lights.

Adam

[John Rumm]

Yup easy enough I suppose...

My preference is to have a three gang two way switch in the hall. One switch has a T&E switch wire to the hall light plus a 3&E to one gang of a two gang two way switch upstairs, the second has a 3&E from the other gang of the landing two way, and the third has just a switch wire to the porch light, where the incoming feed is taken directly to the light from a loop in rose in the normal way (with a possible third cable at the light if it is exporting its PIR switched slave feed).

I can see your way would get quite nice and easy where you have lots of independantly switched outside lights though... you could just run a bunch of 3&E switched feeds from a multi gang switch