Two live wires in light fitting

Tokmon

slhqoue said:

I am connecting a new IKEA pendant light in place of an existing light fitting. I have connected the red wire in the ceiling to the brown 'live' terminal in the IKEA fitting, and the black wire in the ceiling to the blue 'neutral' terminal in the IKEA fitting. However, there is an extra exposed red 'live' wire. Should I connect this to the second available 'live' terminal in the IKEA fitting, or leave it loose as I found it?

That wire may not even be a live wire depending on how old the wiring is. I've replaced light fittings in old houses and they didn't use the correct colours for the light fittings out of laziness. 

MWT

Tokmon said:

That wire may not even be a live wire depending on how old the wiring is. I've replaced light fittings in old houses and they didn't use the correct colours for the light fittings out of laziness. 

I've had this multiple times as well, I never assume that lighting wires have used the colours correctly.

matelodave

That may be true, in which case you need to establish what they are doing, ideally using a tester of some sort rather than guessing and then electrocuting yourself or causing problems somewhere else. The fact that its red doesn't actually mean anything without testing it.

The wire may be part of a ring - in which case it's probably live or might be feeding other lighting circuits, in which case they may stop working because its been disconnected from the loop-in connection.. 

Phones4Chris

Of course, the OP says "live" wires, but we don't know IF he/she did test them with even something basic such as a neon tester, or just describes them as "live" because they are "red" !  As we haven't heard back, I hope the OP hasn't electrocuted themself

JC_Derby

Mouldymeat3 said:

As it's on a landing, is it 2 way switched?

This is what I think, although there is no guarantee that the other wire isn’t a switched live. There’s absolutely no guarantee that the red is even a live anyway OP should have checked and tested prior to starting work.

Phones4Chris

JC_Derby said:

Mouldymeat3 said:

As it's on a landing, is it 2 way switched?

This is what I think, although there is no guarantee that the other wire isn’t a switched live. There’s absolutely no guarantee that the red is even a live anyway OP should have checked and tested prior to starting work.

Yes, the OP should have checked, that's obvious! I suppose that if this light is part-way between two two-way switches, then the wires we are seeing could be the live and switched live from each switch as well as there appears to be no red wire from the cable with the black wire so it's what looks like a single core neutral. It would have to be presumed that it was 2 black wires in the green crimp and that then they could be the permanent live which is fed from one of the two way switches, an abysmal way of wiring things BUT we've al come across abysmal wiring in our lives. AS the OP hasn't come back and said what wire(s) are in the grren crimp, we don't know. That loose red wire certainly looks as though it's got a screw mark on it from a connector.