Electrical wiring question

[ss]

Having being suitably impressed after installing 2 x LED light panels in the shower room I am looking to replace 12 halogen (600 watts) with 5 LED panels (60 watts) in the kitchen. Although I probably wont do it until next year I have discovered that 1 lot of 6 are wired in to the ground floor lighting circuit and the other 6 are wired in to the 1st floor socket circuit. Is the 6 in the socket circuit an issue that I should address when I get around to doing the replacement or is that wiring arrangement ok?

[Tricky Dicky]

It seems a strange arrangement I think the problem is that someone working on the lights might assume they are all on the downstairs lighting circuit and not realise that isolating that circuit will leave the others still liv e. I think I would take the opportunity whilst installing new lights to get them all on the same circuit.

Richard

[NY]

Yes. I'd put all the lights on a) a lighting circuit and b) a downstairs circuit, for this very reason: so that all the lights are isolated with the same circuit breaker. If the downstairs circuit could handle 6 halogen lights at 300 W, then it will be able to handle all twelve LED lights at 60 W - assuming I've understood your numbers correctly.

[Tim Watts]

No it's not OK. Your lights are protected by a 32A breaker (assuming you don't have a radially wired socket circuit).

But you could make it temporarily OK by inserting a fuse inline (using a fused connection unit) with a 3A/5A fuse.

That will be fine-ish until you get a chance to deal with it properly.

But I am confused - do they not all run through one switch or pull cord?

[ss]

Yes you have understood the numbers correctly.

[ss]

Kitchen 25 feet long. At one end a light switch which operates 6 x halogens. At other end a light switch (wired to 1st floor socket circuit) which operates the other 6 halogens. One switch does not operate all 12 halogens.

[spuorgelgoog]

That's all right then (although if you have to walk through the kitchen I'd walk two-way switching of at least one light).

The socket circuit needs to be fused down as mentioned.

Can be very handy having lights in the kitchen and other major rooms split over multiple circuits (and RCDs).

Owain

[John]

Providing the lights have a suitable fuse (fused spur) it's fine. I've been caught out by a hallway switch¹ more than once, you'd think I'd learn.

¹ 2 circuits in one switch - hall light on the downstairs circuit, landing light on the upstairs circuit.

[ss]

Short of lifting floorboards on the 1st floor I cant be sure but it may already be fused down (I live in hope). I am asking questions ahead of `work to be done` so that I can plan ahead, the room above will be getting re carpeted next year so lifting the boards then is not an issue and that will give me decent access to the wiring for the 6 halogens running off the 1st floor sockets.

[John Rumm]

It rather depends on how its wired to the circuit.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with powering lights from a socket circuit in some cases, however you need to take care that the cabling for the lights has adequate fault protection (say via a fused connection unit or similar).

If you wire small CSA wires direct to a socket circuit then you are unlikely to be able to rely on the 30/32A protective device to offer them any protection if a short were to occur in the light part of the circuit.

[Brian-Gaff]

Ok but rather odd I'd suggest. I mean the drain of the leds is going to be really small so the mismatch in the breakers is probably academic in both cases.

Do you think somebody just made a mistake or added more lights later and fitted them to the wrong wire, so to speak? One reason might have been to stop all the lights from going out if one breaker tripped. Brian

[ss]

I dont think it was a mistake, the previous owners done quite a bit of alterations to the house and added a couple of extensions, they also owned an electrical lamp company, so I reckon they knew what they were doing, thats not to say they were adhering to regulations although most of the alterations were done around 25 years ago.

[jgh]

I was caught out by a set of stairs lights with switch at top and bottom of the stairs. I pulled the fuse for "downstairs" and the lights went out, so I started working on it. BNAG! threw me off my step ladder. It turned out that as the lights were upstairs and downstairs, somebody had thought that meant the had to be wired to both the upstairs and downstairs lighting circuits.

jgh

[John Rumm]

Even when wired correctly, you typically have live wires from both circuits present at the switches.

[Mike Clarke]

Only an idiot would install a fused spur connector under the floorboards.

I think it's safe to assume that if you can't find a visible fused spur connector which cuts off the lights when you pull the fuse then the circuit is not protected with a suitable fuse.

[ss]

And you are probably correct, there is a fused spur in the ground floor shower room that I thought was for when they had a gas boiler in an upstairs cupboard now relocated to a porch extension on the ground floor. I will pull the fuse on that just to check but doubtful if that will be for the halogens, when I pulled it previously it didnt cut off anything but then I didnt think to check the halogen lights.....maybe just maybe :-)