Help with Fitting An Outdoor Light

pv23

Hi everyone,

I have recently moved to a new house and amongst other work done, we had electrical re-wiring work carried out.

I intend to install an outdoors motion activated floodlight.

At the intended location, I have two identical wires available. I connected the fixture to one and although it works, I am not able to turn it off using the switch installed on the inside of the house, so it is always on.

When I rang the person who carried out the work, I was told that one of the wires is live from the mains, and the second wire (which I completely ignored) was the wire connected to the switch, and I would have to connect the two wires in a certain manner to get the light to respond to the switch.

Can anyone explain how I would go about doing this?

Thanks

WestonDave

What you need to end up with is the light fitting terminals (live and neutral) connected one to the "live" cable and one to the "switch" cable, with the other two wires from those cables connected together in a safe way whereby they can't connect with anything else within the light fitting. Some fittings provide a third (4th if its earthed) terminal, with others you'll need to get hold of a safe connector that will fit in the space available so that its all electrically safe and preferably watertight.

pv23

WestonDave wrote: »

What you need to end up with is the light fitting terminals (live and neutral) connected one to the "live" cable and one to the "switch" cable, with the other two wires from those cables connected together in a safe way whereby they can't connect with anything else within the light fitting. Some fittings provide a third (4th if its earthed) terminal, with others you'll need to get hold of a safe connector that will fit in the space available so that its all electrically safe and preferably watertight.

Thanks for your reply. just to confirm, there is a 4 terminal connector inside the light fixture. From your reply, am I correct in assuming the following will be the correct way:

"Live" cable's live wire to be connected to the live terminal of fixture and live wire of the "switch" cable, and the same for neutral (neutral to neutral), with the two earth wires connected together.

pv23

I have figured out what you meant now. Now my problem is, what is the best way to connect the different wires from the three different sources (switch wires, live wires and fixture wires).

Thanks

ie - use a different set of connectors external to the light fixture? like a junction box type of device? any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

WestonDave

You've got 4 terminals in the block inside and presumably 3 x 3 wires from the 3 cables.

So the easy one is all 3 earth wires into one terminal. I'd personally use one of the end ones for this.

I'd then put the live from the supply cable, and the live from the switch cable into the terminal at the other end from the earths.

In the terminal next to the earth I'd put the other switch cable wire and the live from the fixture.

Finally in the last terminal the two remaining wires which should be the neutral from the supply and the neutral from the fitting.

You should end up with two wires in each terminal except the earth with 3 in it (assuming the fixture has an earth wire rather than just live and neutral). Check it all carefully to make sure each wire is tightly held in the terminal and that there are no stray "wire hairs" that could cause a short. Close it all up and it should work as designed.