Wiring is best left to the professionals I know but when faced with economic tough times and the simple job of fitting a new lightbulb batten I couldnt resist.
I’m a firm believer that as long as you switch the mains off you cant go too far wrong (someone please correct me here) so I switched it off and got to work on putting in some new light battens for my mum. Out comes the old one (cracked but still working) and it shows two wires (red and black) so in goes the new batten which has four terminals – great, now what?
In very small writing is L (which I assume is live) and E (painted green so I bet earth is good guess. So I wire it up, screw it all back in (note to self – test before screwing everything back in) and test.
The light switch I had replaced went bang (hmmm not good) and the lights wouldnt work (on the same circuit). Wiring diagrams are generally different for each country so Google wasnt going to help so it was look at some existing working fittings and go from there.
Finally I figured out the switch. While it had previously had all the black wires going to what I thought was a common terminal, for the new switch they just need to be bundled together and kept out of the switch. One red wire into the 1 terminal and two went into the Common. Sorted.
But the lights are still not working. There are only so many options so I changed them over so that the red and black were not using the L or E terminals and what do you know they work fine now! The E terminal is used when there is an earth (green) wire and L is possibly for a loop wire.
There’s a certain satisfaction from doing it yourself (while taking sensible precautions). Til next time…