three gang switch wiring

[Herman Hessian]

hi everyone - bit of advice with regard to wiring, please

i have three separate lights which i would like to run to a single, three gang switch, so they can all be operated independently from just that one set of switches - previously they were all run to a double switch in the same location, with two of the lights operated by one common switch, and one on it's own. - the existing wiring looks a bit of pigs ear, though, and i wonder if anyone can clarify what needs to go where.

i have four cables coming in to the box

a) red + black + bare = incoming power
b) red + black + bare = light
c) red + black + bare = light
d) red + blue + yellow + bare = light

all the bare cables run to the earth terminal on the inside of the box, and there's an additional wire from here to the separate earth on the metal switch casing

as it stands two of the black and the blue wires are taped together, not connected to any terminals; the yellow runs in to a terminal along with two reds - no idea what's going on here !

i have bought a new three gang switch, which has COM, LI and L2 terminals for each of the three switches (let's call these switches 1, 2 and 3), plus an earth terminal (metal case) - the yellow and blue wires have thrown me though - no amount of investigation on line says where they might go !

maybe someone can just set out the connections using the following format:

a) red to switch 1 COM (for example)
a) black to switch 1 L1 (for example)

b) red to ?????
b) black to ????

and so on....

if it's any more complicated than having a simple list set out to follow, i'll get a sparky in to do it - not going to take any risks !

thanks in advance...

[ericmark]

From what you say it seems it's not following the normal practice which is not to take neutral wires to the switch. It seem from what you say in your case neutrals have been brought to the switch.

Normally the three core and earth cable is used to wire up two way lights. However since clearly from your description it's not following normal practice then it's no good us guessing what has been done.