I am helping a friend of mine change a light fitting on the his upstairs landing. We had ensured the light switch was switched off. In the surrounding rooms 3 bedrooms and one toilet the lights were switched on also.
His house had old wiring (and old type fuse boxes) so I had told him to remove the pullout fuse related to the upstairs lighting circuit. Unfortunately as he was multi-tasking he wasn't paying attention and removed the downstairs fuse, so the upstairs fuse had not been pulled out.
As we removed the light fitting and removed the wires from the fitting there was a small spark and the lights in 1 bedroom and the toilet went off. We replaced the bulbs with working bulbs in the toilet and the bedroom where the lights failed but they do not work at all. In the other two bedrooms the lights are working fine, even though they are all on the same circuit (ring) - confirmed by pulling out the fuse related to the upstairs lights - they working lights switch off.
The toilet has also got two of the same lights. One has a bulb ( which went off when above happened) and another one didn't have a bulb. We put a working bulb in the light which didn't have a bulb it doesn't work and also another working bulb in the light that went off and it is also not working.
Has the removal of the old light fitting somehow blown something? I don't think the fuse has blown because some lights are working and some aren't. Everywhere else in the house it's all working fine. On the upstairs ring some lights are working, and one bedroom and one toilet isn't? What could be the issue and what should we do? We haven't changed any wiring, we were just changing light fittings as we have done throughout the rest of the house.
The house has old wiring system of wiring with old pullout fuses. We have taken out the upstairs lighting pullout fuse to be totally safe.
What is also weird is that on the light fitting we removed (on the landing) there are 4 wires. 3 of them are coloured black and one is coloured green. How do you connect a modern light fitting to this type of wiring?
We would really appreciate it to understand what has happened and if there is any thing we can do to tackle the two problems
i.e.
1) why are the lights in one bedroom and one toilet not working and what can we do about this
2) how do we connect a modern light fitting to ceiling light wiring which has 3 separate black coloured wires and one green wire.
Thank you in advance for anyone who can shed some 'light' .
Kve
Comments
2 comments postedHi Kve,
Please do take the advice of the previous comment regarding contacting an electrician. This is one of those areas where, to be honest, should be carried out by a professional electrician.
Changing "like for like" electrical fittings in the home is of course not against the Part P building regulations and home owners are entitled to do this. Saying this, the person carrying out the job should really be competent enough to do so.
I hope you do not mind be being blunt here Kve, it's just that this is one of those situations where someone trying to help out another can cause more harm than good!
Lighting circuits can be quite confusing to a non-professional electrician and it sounds like you have a simple 3 plate system. My advice would be to contact your local electrician HERE.
This type of job can be sorted out very quickly by the electrician, and by the sound of it should not cost a great deal (unless anything else is found to be unsafe) rather than your friend being without their upstairs lighting, which of course can be hazardous in itself!
Good luck with it, and please do let us know how you get on.
Gary.
Sounds like you have wrongly connected the new light fitting, the other lights are not working because the power feed has not been connected correctly in the fitting you changed.
There should be some red cables up there, maybe they were pushed into the ceiling and now have a loose connection. Basically one of the black cables should be the switch line, and the other 2 neutrals, they should not be all connected together. The green one should be the earth cable
If you are based in London and need an electrician to have a look, call us at Redring 0207 735 4889 www.redringwebsite.com redring@email.com