Re: Ceiling rose wiring old house Driving me mad arr

[Toby]

If you are not sure get someone who is to look at it, but:

With the mains isolated, first check the colours in the wall switch. You should have a red and black here, but two reds are possible.

You should be able to see the separate cables entering the rose. It is usual for one to be the supply, one to be the switch, and *in most cases* one to feed the next fitting.

The supply and onward feed are joined red-to-red and black-to-black !PLUS! the uninsulated or green/yellow sleeved earth cores are joined, along with the earth to the switch. If there is no earth core, then you wiring is out-dated and you should consider it's replacement.

The feed into the switch is connected to the red supply/feed pair, the output from the switch (usually black often sleeved with red tape) will connect to the brown/live of the pendant, the blue/neutral of the pendant will connect to the black supply/feed pair.

Toby.

[Peter Ashby]

Excellent description Toby, in my case I had connected the live of the pendant to the red supply on the rose. The screw to the fitting on the switch pole of the rose had been painted over which also fooled me for a while. My symptoms were exactly the same as the OPs.

Moral of the story, consult the book PRIOR to starting work. I tried three different switches convinced at one point the dimmer had gone (recent thread in here contributing to that suspicion). I kicked myself after I finally figured it out.

The daughter is forbidden from changing the bulb now.

Peter