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bg2000 · Joined: 11 Feb 2008 Posts: 2 Location: surrey

Could anyone please help. I am trying to rewire a new batten holder to my landing ceiling which can be operated by two wall switches, one upstairs and one down. These two switches ONLY operate the one upstairs light.

The wires coming through the ceiling are from two outer sheaths, both contain a red and black wire only.

The wires contained within the upstairs landing wall switch are as follows;

The top terminal is wired Red.
The bottom left terminal is wired with a Blue and a Black.
The bottom right terminal is wired with a Red and a Yellow.

The bottom terminals have the Black and Red wires coming from an outer sheath.

The new batten holder has 3 brass terminals only marked, Earth, Neutral and Live.

Please tell me where the 2 Red and 2 Black wires are to go in this new batten holder? Do both Black go to Neutral and both Red to Live, or is one of the Black wires actually a 'Live' wire? There are no indications as such. Unfortunately when I got to the old batten holder, most of the 4 wires were already out of their locations.

The wiring in this old house seems to be a mixture of old and newer, but none thankfully of the very old rubber housing.

Please can anyone 'throw some light' on this problem before I get moaned at any more by the wife and kids for not being able to see at the top of the stairs!!

Many thanks

vince knight · Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 4:26 pm Post subject:

On the batton holder:

The 2 reds go together in a terminal block as there is no loop connection terminal.
The two blacks that you have left, one is the live back fro the switch and the other is the neutral.
If it is a bayonet fitting then it does not matter which way round the blacks go, but if it is a scew in (ES) type then the black that is live when the switch is on MUST go to the live terminal.
Earths go in the earth terminal.

Vince