Ask The Trades - lightswitch with no neutral wire?

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Ask The Trades › DIY Forum › Electrical Questions › lightswitch with no neutral wire?

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lightswitch with no neutral wire? (Read 3117 times)

Brizlix

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lightswitch with no neutral wire?
May 11^th, 2014, 9:25am

At some point the bathroom in my house was moved and the room became a bedroom. However, it still has the pull cord lightswitch. I'm wanting to change this to a wall mounted dimmer.

The room has 5 luminaires all wired through a junction box. All wiring is single core and earth. The wall is prepped and I have easy access to run the wiring.

However, the pull cord switch only has two live and earth wires. The live feed goes into the switch then runs into the junction box. Can I simply run the same wires into the dimmer? Or should it have a neutral as well? It looks like the neutral feed runs straight to the junction box bypassing the switch.

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scotspark Trade Member Offline mmmmm it's gonna cost you!! Posts: 3074 Total Thanks: 10 For This Post: 1 scotland Scotland Gender: Trade: Electrician	Re: lightswitch with no neutral wire? Reply #1 - May 11^th, 2014, 11:47am Yes Light switches and dimmers only require the live conductor in and switch wire out. And earth!! Other setails about cct and installation method etc are also important, are you sure you are competent to carry out this work?
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Brizlix GDPR opt-out Total Thanks: 10 For This Post: 1	Re: lightswitch with no neutral wire? Reply #2 - May 11^th, 2014, 12:08pm It threw me because All the other lightswitchs in the house have a red and black wire. Whereas the pull cord has 2 red wires. Should the wire out of the switch be black with a red sheath?
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CWatters

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Re: lightswitch with no neutral wire?
Reply #3 - May 11^th, 2014, 5:29pm

Quote:

It threw me because All the other lightswitchs in the house have a red and black wire

If that's all they have then both are probably "live"...

The red one is normally "Permanent Live" coming into the switch and the black wire is "Switched Live" going back up to the light bulb. Officially the black wire should have a short length of red sleeving on it to indicate it is not neutral.

Quote:

Whereas the pull cord has 2 red wires.

Then you should work out what they are doing. It's possible to make an intelligent guess that one is "Permanent Live" and the other is "Switched Live". I believe you will need to work out which is which.

You will also need a dimmer that does not need a neutral. They are available/common but check the packaging. You can also have problems with this type if the lights are Low Energy or LED.

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