Dimmer Wiring Problem

paulod123

I have a socket in the living room where a dimmer was incorrectly wired in that the dimmers affected the lights in the kitchen and had to be on to allow the kitchen lights to come on. Unfortunallly none of the wires are coloured so I have 4 wires and no idea what is what. 2 of the wires have no resistance to each other so I connected them together to complete the circuit and the kitchen lights now work ok. I would be very grateful if someone could point me as to where the wires should go to the dimmer i.e L1 L2 etc. I guess one of the wires is live and the other would be a switched live. I have a volt meter so I could check voltages comming off them etc. Thanks for the help

Stoner

by socket do you mean light switch?

To be blunt and in no way offensive, if you are checking for resistance then you don't know what you are doing and you are in danger of electrocuting yourself, so you should get an electrician to help you with this it will take all of 2 minutes IMO

sounds like whoever wired the dimmer connected the looped live wire to the kitchen switch to a switch wire position on the living room switch.

if the dimmer is the only switch controlling the lights in your living room, only one switch connection (L1 or L2) is required (unless someone retro fitted an additional cable without seeing it i cant tell you why you have 4 wires in the living room, maybe you switch two circuits there?)

there should be a common connection and an L1 and an L2
the common is where the permanent live comes into the switch and where is it linked to the switch in the kitchen so that it has a permanent live too.


anyway a looped live is most likely in a switched live connection in the living room, but it should be in the common connection (usually a larger connection to accommodate more cables),
but I advise that you get a sparks to address this as from reading your post

paulod123

Hi Stoner,
Thanks for the reply. There was a carpenter in and he put in a low voltage light with a transformer and blew the dimmer switch. He replaced it and thats how the wires got mixed up. There were 2 wires joined together so I
assumed I could figure out which of these with an ohm meter (circuit breaker off of course). When I joined these 2 wires the lights in the Kitchen work again as normal. I am now left with 3 sets of wires. I guess one of these is L1 and one is the L2. The problem is figuring out which wires these are. What could the 3rd wire be? Would it be possible to figure out whic his the live by putting a volt meter accross them and switching back on the power? (I assume live would be +240) According to the circuit diagram for the 2 way dimmer both L1's and L2's should be connected together at the back of the switch and the loads (~ with an arrow through it) are connected together so I should loop some insulated wire connecting L1 to L1 and L2 to L2 and ~ to ~.

Thanks again

Sparky

Yup have come across this before. Happens alot where switchwires, feeds, loop feeds and strapers get mixed up.

You are best to get a sparks out to sort it to be quite honest.

51fun

Spankeh wrote: »

Yup have come across this before. Happens alot where switchwires, feeds, loop feeds and strapers get mixed up.

You are best to get a sparks out to sort it to be quite honest.

i agree with stoner and spankeh for peace of mind call out a sparks to give it a check and tell your carpenter to stick to hanging doors :rolleyes: