I swapped the hinges on the main downstairs room door last year, and of course now the light switch is on the hinge side of the door rather than the opening side.
There is no chance of me getting into the ceiling void above to be able to reroute the cables above the door, so is it permissible and acceptable to crimp extension twin & earth cable where the existing switch is, and route this down to the floor, under for a short way and back up the other side of the door?
Have you got good access under the floor to get a drill in? You will need to drill upwards through the floorboards and the soleplate of the partition. There will also probably be a big lump of plaster behind there that dripped down when it was put on. Threading the cable upwards from the floor to the old and new light positions could be fun too. There is also the rule about the positions that concealed cables are routed in walls, horizontally and vertically from fittings. You will end up with a cable down one side of the door with no hint that it is there. Not sure how strict that rule is though.
I have the skirtings off at the moment, so have good access to feed the cables through the flooring. Unfortunately, I've just laid the new floor in the room in question, and wish I'd thought of this before doing it! I'll have to lift a board in the hallways if I can't feed the cable through.
Now, the cable is, as I say, in the cavity of a lath and plaster wall, so this isn't as if it's chased into the wall. The cavity is probably about 4" deep, and the cable just rattles around in it.
I could feed a plastic conduit into the cavity to give the cable a little protection.
I don't really want to leave the existing switch there (in response to Adam) because it's a brass dimmer, though I think that it is one that can be used as a three way.
The Regs suggest extra protection is needed for cables in non-obvious runs if they're closer to the surface than two metric inches, i.e. 50 of your earth millimetres. If the cable really is loose-flapping, in practice the chance of penetrating it with a drill or picture hook is negligible, so if you're willing to take a small risk, and given that other parts of the installation also have loose-wires-in-the-cavity, you're not going to create a massive hazard by doing the crimp-and-down-and-up route you suggest. (Personally I prefer if possible to find the junction box or rose which supplies the switch and run a new unbroken length, rather than extending; but obviously that's a bit more work).
Now, if you're happy to spend a bit more in exchange for reduced effort, you'll find that remote-control switches and dimmers are down to the 25-30 quid mark at many of the online leccy-bits suppliers, and at many trade counters. With that gear, you can put the mains-connected dimmer unit at the current position, behind a blanking plate if it's one which doesn't have a "local" hard-wired switch, and slap the no-mains-needed remote switch/controller wherever you like. Pricier, of course, but could be a hassle-saver...
After considering a couple of things, I decided to go ahead and do the job - fortunately (for my pedantic mind) I think that your post has just confirmed that it's probably within regs. There's a 100mm cavity, which means that if it dangles down the middle (it's not clipped anywhere) then it's 50mm from either wall.
Belt and braces, I put it in some conduit. If anyone manages to drill through that then I want to know how - because if you wanted to do it then you couldn't in a million attempts! Drill bit shoudl just push it out of the way.
Anyway, when the replastering is done the missus will be happy. Of course I missed the studs in the new location completely (skirting off so I know exactly where they are). Sod's law is that I tried to install it slap bang on top of a noggin (why is the jigsaw making such a big deal about cutting through lath and plaster I think? Reason - cos it's just cut through 70% of the depth of the noggin.... didn't even bend the blade! Atlas Copco, love 'em...). So, noggin repair added to the time to do the job, plus few inches of wall disintegrated around the new position, needs replastering (good job I'm doing some plastering tomorrow..). Sigh, I'm normally so good at fitting sockets and switches.
Incidentally, I would normally have run another length of cable from the originating rose/junction box, but unfortunatly there was no chance in this case. The run would have been across all of the ceiling/floor joists, and there was no chance of lifting the boards upstairs at all (all nicely polished, varnished and bedroom only dust free room in the house).
Still, just wasted an entire afternoon on what would have been a simple job just 3 weeks ago when the floor was up, so I'm feeling happy with myself again...
Well done BUT..... Are you practising cursing for when the wife decides to rehang the door to fit in with the new furniture. I laid sat cable, tv arial cable, tv uplink cable and VHF cable to some nice points behind the TV, sunk the lot into the wall filled it in, painted the room and the next day she went to IKEA and bought book shelves and moved the TV across the room. Adam PS. IKEA is Scandinavian for HELL.
I had considered this very point extremently carefully before embarking upon said voyage of pain!
Door better off opening as it does at the moment whatever the furniture arrangement I reckon. The current furniture arrangement will probably stay as is for a couple of years, and we'll probably move at the end of it anyway.
I'd forgotten what IKEA is like - haven't been there for quite a while now, perhaps once in the last 2 years! Every time she want some more furniture now I promise to make it and buy another book or something, and the fear of that is usually enough to put her off the idea for a while...
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