Replacing bathroom light - wiring question

So it's been punted off the list of things to do today owing to me not having the bits.

Here's the situation - appreciate some advice. I'm sure I know how to solve this - but would welcome input on the correctness of my solution.

Wanting to fit a ceiling mounted nice chroime light to fit in with the bathroom. This makes provision for 1* cable for each of LNE - not much room for anything other than 1 wire.

Existing is ceiling mounted normal unit with tmerinals for commoning up elemnts of lighting cct.

This one has 3 common lives, 2 common earths and what would appear from it's marking - and testing with a meter to be a switched live.

Cables are freely accessible from the roofspace.

My money is on me cutting the power, marking each wire, and pulling back into the roofspace. Securely attaching to one fo the joists a normal electical join box, and commoning up the lives neutrals and earths there - then drop a single run down.

I've got some normal round 20/30a joint boxes, but it seems a bit of a dodgy way to do this - don't doubt that it will work - just I've got this feeling that I could be doing this another way/better way.

Anyone got any advice?

Cheers Dan.

Reply to
Dan delaMare-Lyon
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If there isn't a typo in the above something doesn't add up, please go and re check (so far you make no mention of a neutral return) !

Most wiring for lighting will require a joint box with 4 terminals

1 > live feed / live loops together with feed to switch. 2 > return from switch together with feed to light unit. 3 > neutral loops and return from light unit. 4 > Earth loops

T1 switch Live---------------o-----------------------o/ o----to T2 loops________/

T2 Light unit from switch-----o-----------------[ ]--------to T3 0

T3 from light----------o---------nuetral return to CU \_______neutral loops

Earth wire T4 from light----------o---------to CU \_____Earth loops

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

Well connecting all lives, neutrals and earths isn't quite what you want to do but I'm sure you didn't really mean what you wrote. B-)

As there is "access" the normal joint box seems ideal. Provided it has enough terminals, you need 4, L N E and SwL. At least it's better than the instructions that came with a fitting I just bought. Connect the wires into the supplied "chocolate block" terminal strip, wrap it with two layers of insulating tape and poke it up into the void....

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Oh yes - and 3 neutrals - knew I missed something :)

Reply to
Dan delaMare-Lyon

No - it's sunday - not very literate on a sunday :) as I proved.

K cool - I've got one in the tool box I now discover. What would be nicer would be a "chocolate block" type bar that I could wire into like in the light fitting that's there at the moment. Why do these fancy lights make no provision for the fact they might be in the "middle" of a lighting cct?

Cheers Dan.

Reply to
Dan delaMare-Lyon

'Cos over on the Continent, the convention seems to be to wire radially to each lighting point, with a little round box (if you're lucky) for the cable to poke out of. Loop-in wiring is a Britisher foible, and the world of global mass manufacturing (on which IKEA and their ilk rely) means a few pennies saved in material costs, and most of all reducing the number of variants of a product down to 1 if poss, and if not to 1 core unit and "outboard" country/region-specific fitments, is The Way To Go.

In some cases - not for a fancy-pants living-room-showpiece, mind - it can look reasonable (and is safe and Regs-compliant, xpt in a bathroom within ?Zone 1&2? where access-to-terminals-without-a-tool arguments may apply) - to leave the existing ceiling rose in place, fit the fancy Euro-fitting to the ceiling close by (watch those mounting screws in relation to the likely cable run ;-) and run a short length of flex out of the rose and into the fitting; when I've done this I've preferred heat-resistant flex to standard PVC. Like I say, not wildly pretty, but quite reasonable in some situations. You can always tell yourself it's "for now", while you "test" whether the light cast is really suitable, and that you'll tart it up with the junction-box-in-more-or-less-accessable-place when you next redecorate or otherwise make use of one of those rare circular tuits...

Reply to
Stefek Zaba

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