One of three lighting rings stopped working

willidh · Jul 13, 2012

Hi All

Just moved into a new home last month and we're discovering all the weird things that other people do to their houses and a number of faults.

The lounge has three rings of halogen spotlights in the ceiling on dimmers. A few days ago one of the dimmers stopped working - the on/off switch stopped clicking. I purchased a replacement and fitted it but the lights on that ring still didn't turn on.

I checked that the new dimmer worked OK by temporarily using it to replace one of the working dimmers - and it works fine.

So I then measured the voltage across the live and ground wires. Nothing!

That was quite surprising so I checked the voltage across the other two pairs of live+ground and I get around 210V.

So I was wondering where I should start looking next - given that all the wires are in the walls, I don't relish the idea of taking the house apart! I'm really hoping there isn't some dodgy wiring behind a wall or ceiling somewhere unreachable.

Cheers,

Danny

Welchyboy · Jul 13, 2012

Get a qualified electrician to take a look, he will be in and out, job done!

willidh · Jul 13, 2012

Thanks for your reply Welchyboy.
I was hoping to eliminate the simple stuff before having to call in an expert (such as replacing the broken dimmer).
So any helpful advice on other checks I can perform would be appreciated.

Des 56 · Jul 13, 2012

Assuming the job was not lashed in by a diy fan (which it may very well have been)faulty cabling in the wall will be unlikely

Firstly,the most obvious problem are the circuits on seperate fuses/mcbs
How was the wiring constructed ? Do you have neutrals at the dimmers or a junction box in the ceiling space with live and switch returns at the dimmers ?
Was the earth presence confirmed at the dimmer for the voltage reading to be valid ?

This is the type of fault that requires on the job info and I suspect you will not get much help to assist you,fault finding via a keyboard can be nigh on impossible