Ceiling Light Wiring and Need to Know What Connects to What Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[euphoria1963]

I am trying to install a ceiling fan in the bedroom.After removing the existing light I have come across 2 sets of cables one containing a blue sheathed wire with a bare wire next to it and a brown wire with another bare wire next to that.The ceiling fan has the normal 3 connections L-E-N , so 3 connections but 4 wires. Need to know what connects where please.

[collectors]

Unusual cable, but put some green sleeving on the bare copper earth wires & leave around 5-7mm to connect both together in the earth terminal. Then connect the brown to the live + terminal & the blue to the - neutral terminal.

[ericmark]

The rules don't allow the earth wire to be used for anything but an earth, but with the rest over sleeving is permitted. It is common with lights to over sleeve with a different colour, it is also common for the sleeves to fall off. So forget wire colours.

Two ways to work it out, one is test, the other is see where they were connected before you started. I can't do either from here. With AC power there is no + or - we have line and neutral both being called live wires.

Yes I know you don't think of neutral as live, but with lights it is all too common to get a borrowed neutral due to a two way system and as a result neutral is all too often live to a point where it can give a nasty shock.

This is why I use a neon screwdriver, not for the line wire but for neutral which becomes live as it is removed from a terminal.