Wiring up a 3 gang remote dimmer (varilight)

[papalazarou]

Hi all, not sure whether this is in the right place or even the right forum as I'm not an electrician but hopefully someone can help.

I have just bought a Varilight 3 gang remote dimmer to put in my house and unsure how to wire it up. My current switch is just a single dimmer running the main room lights, there are 2 lots of 1mm twin and earth with 1 red wire going to the 'wavy line' (is this the switch)? and another 2 red wires going to L2. L1 has no wires in it and the 2 neutrals are just connected together and blanked off with the earths going to the box.

Now I have installed some spotlights and have another 2 1mm twin and earth running into the same box. I would like all 3 sets (main room lights and 2 sets of spots) to be independantly dimmable via the 3 gang dimmer so how do I go about this. The new dimmer has 3 boxes with the 'wavy line', slave, and live connections on each. Any help would be appreciated.

many thanks in advance.

Papa

 

[acat]

Firstly are your new spotlights wired into the lighting circuit or totally independant. What wattage are they and if they are wired into your lighting circuit how many lights are on that circuit already


Chris

 

[papalazarou]

no they are totally independant from the main circuit there are 2 50w spotlights wired into a fused switched connection unit and also a dimmable rope light which is wired into another connection unit. Both connection units then run into the back box that houses my main light switch. As far as I know I have 2 separate circuits one for downstairs and one for upstairs as I have 2 seperate switches in the MCB. the downstairs circuit controls lights in 5 rooms.

Hope this helps and thanks.

shaun.

 

[sparks1234]

The instructions are really self explanetory in the varilight dimmers, they dont work like a normal 2 way and intermediate, they have a feed, a switchline and the other connection is a control line, I will try to dig the instructions out and repost again later

I would say that the 2 wires in the dimmer are your lives, but you need to check and clarify, these need to be linked to all of the lives on the new varilight and your switchlines I think are marked as a lamp on the drawing, the neutrals should go in the block with the original ones

 

[papalazarou]

thanks for the reply, I'll see if I can make sense of the instructions too.