stevie_b Posted June 13, 2011 Share Posted June 13, 2011 My house was built in the early 1970s and has grey-insulated single core flex in the loft for the lighting circuit. What I'm trying to do is splice into the upstairs lighting circuit to install 2 or 3 new lights. In the places I've dug the wiring out from the insulation it's buried in, there are 5 single-core grey cables. That strikes me as a very odd number. Is this common, and if so can anyone tell me what the wires are likely to do? (e.g. are they 2 live and 3 neutral, and what circuits (upstairs or downstairs?) are they likely to be supplying?). I appreciate this is next to impossible if what I describe isn't a standard set-up, but the wiring looks fairly original, and if I'm right there must be hundreds of thousands of lofts in the UK with wiring just like mine. A bit of background: I've already successfully spliced into the lighting circuit to extend it for the new light fittings I wanted. This worked fine until I changed my consumer unit from an old fuse-wire type one to an RCD board. My new lights trip out whenever any one of them is turned on, and I'm pretty sure it's because I've accidentally used a borrowed neutral (i.e. using the live from the upstairs circuit and the neutral from the downstairs) when I did the splice. The only reason I can think of for there being downstairs wiring in the loft is for the landing light: even so, I don't understand how the landing light wiring avoids the borrowed neutral problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottC Posted June 13, 2011 Share Posted June 13, 2011 PM'd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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