volt stick conundrum

voltstick picking up capacitive coupling to other live wires?

is it a digital multimeter or an old-school analogue one (high vs low impedance)

Analogue meter. I dare say it must be down to capacitative coupling. Just makes me wonder what use is a volt stick? Are they useful for anything?

Tim

The switch is in the neutral wire.

Aren't they more for finding if something is dead?

That said, mine has a button to lower the sensitivity.

My problem is that I can’t really visualise the wiring. It’s not like domestic wiring where a ceiling rose would have a live circuit but the live (or neutral if done incorrectly) to the lamp then interrupted by a switch as there’s only a three-terminal Live/Neutral/Earth chocolate block type connector in each light fitting and no switch wiring that I can see.

Tim

Is the route of the cable from switch to lights (and if different fusebox to lights) visible? I ask as I'd suspect something done since you arrived - e.g. someone finding (possibly without realising it) there is a switch in the "warehouse" :)

Alas the wiring is all under floorboards upstairs and I’ve lifted a few boards to try and trace it but I’m a long way from knowing where it all goes. We keep looking for an overlooked switch but there aren’t any.

I’m beginning to think that something may have been buggered up when someone removed an armoured supply cable to a non-existent outside shed. There was a bare cable dangling around in the area behind our unit and probably not unreasonably this wasn’t considered safe. As it’s gone now I can’t see where the internal connection was but I did find a redundant fused connection box today (with no fuse). On removing the front plate there were no wires at all, in or out.

That said, I can’t imagine that the lights would have been on the same circuit as a fairly heavy armoured cable feeding an outside shed.

I’m beginning to think that it must be two long radial circuits from the consumer unit, quite possibly switched on the neutral. There is definitely power at the switches but nowt at any light.

More head scratching and maybe floorboard lifting done.

Dunno if this is relevant but it used to be an electrical factors. Maybe like the cobblers children being the worst shod, an electrical factors wiring is gonna be dodgy. ;-)

Tim

What brand of Volt stick? I have two, one of which works well and the other detects phantom current.

Cheers

Dave R

Simple, the neutral connection has failed! :-)

However volts sticks will light up on capacitive feed between cables so are not very useful for this sort of thing anyway.

Domestic wiring is changing to bringing permanent live and neutral to the switch and then the fitting only has switched live and neutral, plus earth.

I think this must be how they’ve done it. With the the switches a long way from the lights and only two light circuits it would be relatively wasteful of wire to run switch loops all the way back to the fuse cupboard.

Tim

Spent two hours with a qualified sparky today and he couldn’t find the fault! Annoying but at least I don’t feel so bad about not being able to track it down. ;-)

Tim

Well you would need to start somewhere to find out where its broken, and if your suggestion works, then it has to be in the unit you cannot work out. The question is, why did it fail, is there some hidden circuit breaker or trip you are anaware of?

Often when taking on problems in work done by others, ignore logic completely!

Brian

Well they do tell you that a live cable is somewhere running closely with your wire I guess. I used to be a bit perplexed when a double insulated bit of hi if with no earth would light those sticks quite often when switched on or off, indeed if there was a satin finish to the case metal, merely running a light finger along you could feel the 50 hz. Brian