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What is the best way to wire ceiling lights?

Arran Cameron
The ceiling rose junction box with its loop-in wiring is now really showing its age and is no longer a practical (or even safe) installation for most residents who wish to install fancy light fittings. It is still, however, the most common arrangement for new build houses and rewires, probably as the result of the electrician's training and how they consider it to be the norm or they cannot think of (potentially better) alternatives.


So, what is the best way to wire ceiling lights? Should neutral wires be taken to the switches or not?
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    Chris Pearson:




    Dbat:

    Thats fine until a few years down the line when such records have been lost, and some poor electrician is struggling to fault find on a lighting circuit with only one cable at each light and switch. Then he's got to play russian roulette taking up carpets and boards to guess where this mystery central box you've installed is hidden under the floors. Any such box needs to be easy accessible and to easy to find. Even in a loft you'll be up and down the ladder alot disconnecting circuits to break down the fault, so whats the real benefit?




    If the records are kept in their proper place, which is within or adjacent to the DB (514.9.1), how do they get lost?


    And please somebody, tell me why a competently constructed installation should become faulty? ?


     




    Never seen an DB info with a detailed design layout plan in a domestic installation. The test results yes, the hidden location that someone has put a junction box in the floor...no. 

    Erm, vermin damage, water damage, light fitting failure. Difficult to split up an installation when you can't find the hidden junction box 

  • 0

    That may work unless Madam has set her heart on some wooden sockets, or other design in which appearance is more important than durability or function.



    In which case, three of the larger Wagos in the back of the socket box.


    It may work well for a row of sockets behind a desk or in a kitchen, but you are surely not going to have a horizontal chase all the way around a sitting room? So either you use a JB here and there, or else you bring the wires up (or down) to a socket and back, in which case it is beginning to look like a ring.



    Not sure I follow - you can take multiple cables up and down a chase and it sill be a perfectly good radial.


      - Andy.
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    but you are surely not going to have a horizontal chase all the way around a sitting room?




    Just me then (?), though to be fair not often, and I agree it feels 'wrong', but I have a couple of cases I recall, once  actually in a conservatory, where there was no roof void to go up into anyway, and another in a kitchen, with flat above and below having a solid floor, so the wiring was horizontal between boxes below counter for appliance sockets and pops up for sockets and switches.


    But it is spurious, and as far as possible, all joints should be in back boxes of sockets or switches, or if in the ceiling, perhaps in these things round dry line boxes,   with lid   which at a push can take a stuffing gland, in places where a ceiling rose would go if there had been more room for it.

    In a well designed layout, there should be an absolute minimum of joint boxes of any kind. I agree they are occasionally  unavoidable, but undesirable.

     


  • 0

    AJJewsbury:




    That may work unless Madam has set her heart on some wooden sockets, or other design in which appearance is more important than durability or function.



    In which case, three of the larger Wagos in the back of the socket box.


    That's ugly! ?

  • 0

    Chris Pearson:




    Dbat:

    Thats fine until a few years down the line when such records have been lost, and some poor electrician is struggling to fault find on a lighting circuit with only one cable at each light and switch. Then he's got to play russian roulette taking up carpets and boards to guess where this mystery central box you've installed is hidden under the floors. Any such box needs to be easy accessible and to easy to find. Even in a loft you'll be up and down the ladder alot disconnecting circuits to break down the fault, so whats the real benefit?






    If the records are kept in their proper place, which is within or adjacent to the DB (514.9.1), how do they get lost?


    And please somebody, tell me why a competently constructed installation should become faulty? ?


     




    Lol... I think that it is still a rarity to find a complete set of distibution 'details where they should be' in a domestic environment. They don't just get lost, they are disgarded as being junk paper.( remember the advice given for 3 month test interval for RCDs).


    Within the last week, I went to switch my 2-way hall lighting and found that one of the strappers has become disconnected, an intermittent RCD trip. The electrical rewire was done about 5 years ago.


    Legh

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    mapj1:

    But it is spurious, and as far as possible, all joints should be in back boxes of sockets or switches ...




    Appendix 15 seems to have no objection to (BS 60670) junction boxes; and in fact although it may be possible, fig 15B doesn't show branching of 4 mm2 conductors in radial sockets, presumably because BS 1363 socket outlets need only accommodate 8 mm2 of them.

  • 0
    Never say never, just best avoided. 


    ? (neutral face emoji) 


    Andy Betteridge
  • 0

    Sparkingchip:


    Installing lighting circuits using junction boxes is not good installation practice.




    Are you implying that Surewire junction boxes are anathema, or even completely heretical, to professional electricians?


    One criticism I have of them is that they do not manufacture a junction box that fits inside an electrical back box. Such a junction box mounted in a wall will eliminate issues with junction boxes concealed (or made difficult to access) beneath floorboards.


    Correct me if I am wrong, but the ceiling rose junction box was originally designed to reduce costs of a lighting installation as opposed to improving fault finding or eliminating screw terminals in junction boxes installed beneath floorboards.



     

  • 0
    "Correct me if I am wrong, but the ceiling rose junction box was originally designed to reduce costs of a lighting installation as opposed to improving fault finding or eliminating screw terminals in junction boxes installed beneath floorboards."


    What relevance would that be? if it does all of that whatever its original intention was then to move a step backwards would be a ruf practice and must be avoided surerly?


    "Are you implying that Surewire junction boxes are anathema, or even completely heretical, to professional electricians?"

    Well they must be (unless sited in an easy place to access).

    Any pro would make all connections accessable by being inside points/accessories and not hidden inside walls or under floorboards.
  • 0

    Arran Cameron:




    Sparkingchip:


    Installing lighting circuits using junction boxes is not good installation practice.




    Are you implying that Surewire junction boxes are anathema, or even completely heretical, to professional electricians?


    One criticism I have of them is that they do not manufacture a junction box that fits inside an electrical back box. Such a junction box mounted in a wall will eliminate issues with junction boxes concealed (or made difficult to access) beneath floorboards.


    Correct me if I am wrong, but the ceiling rose junction box was originally designed to reduce costs of a lighting installation as opposed to improving fault finding or eliminating screw terminals in junction boxes installed beneath floorboards.



     


     




    Maybe they don't make one as the ceiling rose or loop at the switch works perfectly well, and also doesn't leave random blank-plated double sock boxes dotted around the house?

    What does it matter what it was made for? Have you ever tried to do some basic circuit fault finding? Easy access and splitting up of cables is the name of the game, and your going to struggle if the previous person went down the central hidden junction box route aren't you?

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