Moving a ceiling light

Quick 90 deg turns whilst pulling on the cable usually releases it. It's Helacon that I keep in the van so I have used them (just never used the box you linked to).

Thanks, Adam and Andrew, for the replies. I obviously didn't have the technique right.

I was thinking the same thing but with the added theory that the existing light was pinching an earth from another circuit.

I'm sure I remembered hearing that if an electrician does *any* work on a house that has deficient earth bonding, that work *must* be done at the same time otherwise no work can be done at all.

So the "missing earth" isn't necessarily in the light, it might be that the water pipes/gas pipes are not bonded. As indeed mine are not; I really need to get onto that.

Neil

I wondered about that, but would that really matter? Obviously, borrowing a neutral is bad practice - and likely to cause all sorts of problems if the circuits are RCD protected. But aren't all earths effectively connected to a single point anyway?

They are, but the practice is still frowned upon for various reasons... some include: If you have disconnected one circuit in its entirety while working on, it opens the possibility that an earth fault on an unrelated but "borrowing" circuit could place dangerous potentials on the disconnected circuits CPC. Also the CPC for the circuit is sized to provide fault protection for that one circuit - not more than one circuit, and possibly not even that rating of circuit (depending on what you borrowed from where). You also make testing and diagnostics on the source circuit more difficult since you may have introduced additional return paths to the main earth terminal.

Yup, if the main equipotential bonding is not to current standard, then that would need to be rectified when carrying out any other work. Hence another case where a customer may refuse to pay for additional work, and the electrician is forced to turn down the job.

See: