Light flickering after water splash on switch, how to fix?

Howdy folks.

Quick explanation of my switches first:

My kitchen has 4 light fixtures. Each can be controlled by two switches. So I have 8 switches in the room.

There are two doors into the room, a kitchen door from the hallway, and a back door from the garden. Inside each door is a 4 gang 2 way switch.


I recently was painting, and accidentally got paint on one of the switches. In a haste to get rid of it, i wiped the switch with a damp cloth, that turned out to be wetter than damp, and i accidentally got the switch wet. Immediately from that, the light wouldn't turn on.


I took off the face plate, to try let it air out, to no avail (this is about a month ago).


It only affects one light in the room, but the light will flicker when turned on from either side of the room (so even though I only got the switch beside the kitchen door wet, when the light is turned on from the back door, it still flickers anyway).


I'm wondering if anyone can advise on a fix for this? Please, for the love of god, don't tell me i need to replace that wire (ie pull down the ceiling to get the entire wire out).

Anyone able to advise? I was hoping it'd just be a new 4 gang light switch, but because it flickers from the other side of the room, im not sure?


Thanks in advance




Here's some possibly non-essential additional information to confuse: Because I have 2 switches for each light fixture, I have 4 switch combos to turn each light on.

For example, if I turn on a light inside the kitchen door by pressing the switch upwards, then i turn it off at the back door, the next time i want to turn it on from the kitchen side, i will be pressing the switch down, instead of up (whereas if i only ever turn it on/off from the kitchen side, it will always be up to power on, and down to power off).

By playing around with the switches, i have noticed that if i press the kitchen door switch upwards to turn the light on, it turns on fine and has no issues. But the three other combos (down from the kitchen side, or up or down from the back door side) the light flickers and cuts out.

Doctors room ghost

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Howdy folks.

Quick explanation of my switches first:

My kitchen has 4 light fixtures. Each can be controlled by two switches. So I have 8 switches in the room.

There are two doors into the room, a kitchen door from the hallway, and a back door from the garden. Inside each door is a 4 gang 2 way switch.


I recently was painting, and accidentally got paint on one of the switches. In a haste to get rid of it, i wiped the switch with a damp cloth, that turned out to be wetter than damp, and i accidentally got the switch wet. Immediately from that, the light wouldn't turn on.


I took off the face plate, to try let it air out, to no avail (this is about a month ago).


It only affects one light in the room, but the light will flicker when turned on from either side of the room (so even though I only got the switch beside the kitchen door wet, when the light is turned on from the back door, it still flickers anyway).


I'm wondering if anyone can advise on a fix for this? Please, for the love of god, don't tell me i need to replace that wire (ie pull down the ceiling to get the entire wire out).

Anyone able to advise? I was hoping it'd just be a new 4 gang light switch, but because it flickers from the other side of the room, im not sure?


Thanks in advance




Here's some possibly non-essential additional information to confuse: Because I have 2 switches for each light fixture, I have 4 switch combos to turn each light on.

For example, if I turn on a light inside the kitchen door by pressing the switch upwards, then i turn it off at the back door, the next time i want to turn it on from the kitchen side, i will be pressing the switch down, instead of up (whereas if i only ever turn it on/off from the kitchen side, it will always be up to power on, and down to power off).

By playing around with the switches, i have noticed that if i press the kitchen door switch upwards to turn the light on, it turns on fine and has no issues. But the three other combos (down from the kitchen side, or up or down from the back door side) the light flickers and cuts out.

Maybe take it off and dry it with a hairdryer or maybe there is corrosion in it.be careful with it.dangerous.maybe better get a sparky to check it for you

2011

If wiring needs to be replaced it is not due to this incident, it would need replacing anyway for an unrelated issue. There is nothing in your post that suggests there is an issue with the wiring.

You have a faulty switch.
Whatever the water did it has resulted in a poor connection when the effected light is switched on. If it is as me I would get the light switch replaced as these are not serviceable items.

2011

2011 wrote: »

If wiring needs to be replaced it is not due to this incident, it would need replacing anyway for an unrelated issue. There is nothing in your post that suggests there is an issue with the wiring.

You have a faulty switch.
Whatever the water did it has resulted in a poor connection when the effected light is switched on. If it is as me I would get the light switch replaced as these are not serviceable items.

See, reading that, it makes sense that the light switch itself is the issue.


But then when you take into consideration the switch on the opposite side of the room causes the same issue now too, does it still make sense that it could be just a switch (genuine question, not being sarcastic or anything).


The wiring/lighting was part of an extension, and it's only about 4 months old.

2011

No, there is nothing to suggest that the other switch is faulty. You have to understand the way it is wired to understand this. This diagram shows the most likely wiring of you 2 way switching arrangement.



Both switches are always in circuit, so current will flow through both switches anytime that the light is on. Each switch can be in position 1 or position 2. Let's say that the left hand switch in the above diagram has developed a fault that only presents itself when it is in position 1. That means that when the light is on and this switch is in position 2 the fault will not present itself. This does not mean that the right hnd switch is faulty.

I know this is an old thread at this stage, but I just realised I never came back to it to add a conclusion (and it's annoying when you go searching for info, find a similar issue, and the thread ends without any conclusion to the issue).

I'm happy to say the advice has been spot on and a change of the switch itself has indeed fixed things. I picked up a new switch and the swapover took about 10-15 minutes (could probably do it faster if you were in a rush, or competent). I was afraid of breaking anything so was in overly-careful slow-mo mode.


All is working well now. I actually fixed this issue weeks ago, but just forgot to reply back here. 2011, Thanks for the excellent, knowledgeable, diagnosis of the issue.

Doctor's Room Ghost, cheers for your also very helpful ideas, which I did try out before resorting to getting a new switch to install.