Lighting circuit...switch live or neutral

A friend who is an electrical engineer said to switch the lives on

lighting circuit but I have also read somewhere to switc neutrals...who is right??

Thank

-- joey1522

Reply to
joey1522
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deffinatley your friend is right , I am also an electrician , switching the neutral will make the ligh work normally , but it leaves you problem of where to tie up your hors

-- Tony

Reply to
Tony

This has got to be a troll....

Put it another way, I hope it is ! :~(

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

Doesn't he mean he "...switch neutrals as well" (ie, use a DP switch)?

Reply to
Lobster

Your friend is a true friend. Your friend is on your side. Your friend wants to see you live to a ripe old age.

The 'somewhere' you read was the work of the Devil. The Devil wants you to fry. The Devil is making you imagine you read this lunatic idea of switching the neutral.

Back in the realms of the rational... the neutral is firmly connected to earth potential; under no-fault conditions the neutral is 'safe' (won't do you harm if you touch it alone, while in contact with the mass of earth). By contrast, the live side is doing rapid oscillations, 50 times a second, shooting up to something like 340V above earth potential, sinking increasingly quickly down to earth potential, dropping past it just as fast as it came towards it, ending up at something like 340V below earth potential, and zooming back up again through 0V back to the

340V-above mark.

That's something you don't want to be touching - say, if you're clumsy enough to touch the pin in the lampholder that's connected to the live. Ow. That would give you an unpleasant tingle; or, if you were resting against an earthed surface like the kitchen sink, kill you. Oops.

Hence, we switch the *live* side. That way, when it's off, it's *off*, unlikely to hurt (or kill) us.

If we're smart, we don't go sticking our fingers into something that alleged to be switched off, mind: it's always possible that someone was listening to the Devil when they wired up their lighting... or that someone under the Devil's influence swapped over the red and black wires (brown and blue in the Modern world) somewhere further back in the circuit, and the Devil made them forget to independently test that the red (brown) wire really was the Live one and the black (blue) one Neutral.

It's not even funny. Switches go on the live side.

It's so not funny that many of the regulars will suspect your posting is a fake to encourage the NICEIC profit-making myth that d-i-y'ers are all too incompetent to touch their house electrics - a myth whose complement is rapidly dispelled by spending a little time spent browsing the IEE Forum where the pros gather... but I digress.

Switches go in the LIVE side.

Happy?

Reply to
Stefek Zaba

Well, that is a possibility I suppose...

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

I can safely say that in this case nobody is going to accuse you of overzealous caution "a-la Lurch" ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

But not really in a lighting circuit, however.

Reply to
Stefek Zaba

"Stefek Zaba" wrote | >>Doesn't he mean he "...switch neutrals as well" (ie, use a DP switch)? | > Well, that is a possibility I suppose... | But not really in a lighting circuit, however.

The exception would be to an extractor fan (which if it's a timer over run model will require a triple pole fan isolator for live / switched live / neutral).

Owain

Reply to
Owain

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:56:44 +0000, Andy Burns strung together this:

;-) Switches in the LIVE every time here.

Reply to
Lurch

I have another exception. I have a wall lamp in the porch, fed from a hole drilled through from a disused back-box. Many moons ago I wired a feed into the back-box from a loop-in from the living-room light. It was convenient to use a two pole switch here, really as a handy way to extend the neutral into the porch.

It was a shot in the dark drilling the hole from the switch position at an angle of some 45 degrees, with a two-foot long masonry bit. As it happened it came through at just the desired point in the porch!

Reply to
Frank Erskine

You obviously do not live in a rural location with a PME installation :-)

42 volts of 'bite' on neutral or 'earth' convinced me to change the earthing arrangements toute suite.
Reply to
Mike

So why do we have to spend a fortune on two pole cooker, fan and everything else other than lighting switches ?

Reply to
Mike

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 00:15:31 -0000, "Mike" strung together this:

That should really read;

All single pole switches should go in the live (phase) conductor only.

In answer to your query, all fixed equipment requires double pole isolation. Lightswitches are for functional switching and single pole switching should be in the live (phase) conductor *ONLY*.

Reply to
Lurch

ahh, that pre-empted a question that was rattling around in my head, why _3_ pole isolator was needed for timer fans.

Reply to
Andy Burns

The somewhere could also have been an avionics wiring manual (where is it standard practice to switch the returns.... ;-)

Reply to
John Rumm

Because they have a permanent live for the timer circuit as well as a switched live from the light. Hence the need for a three pole to totally isolate them.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Thanks, but as I said lurch pre-empted (rather than prompted) my question, I could see why you'd need to isolate the permanent and switched lives, but not why you'd need to isolate the neutral.

Actually I still do wonder *why* (apart from "them is the rules") I mean a ceiling rose is fixed wiring and you can't individually isolate neutral from that ... so why is it deemed necessary to do so on fixed equipment such as the fan?

Reply to
Andy Burns

What if some twerp has reversed the positive and neutral connections at some point further back in the circuit ?...

With 'portable appliances' you can isolate them by pulling the plug out - not so with fixed appliances IYSWIM.

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

Because although in theory the neutral should be at earth potential it isn't always. And when servicing gas equipment, a spark from this situation could be lethal - as an example. So isolation means just that. Of course a faulty or poor earth could also result in sparks under some conditions if the bonding isn't correct, so I often wonder why this isn't isolated too?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

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