I am replacing my existing central light fitting. The room also has two matching wall lights which I have already replaced. All lights are controlled by a wall switch with two on-offs for centre & wall lights. The ceiling rose has long gone and I am left with four cables coming from the ceiling rather than the usual three. The first cable has a single black lead, the second & third have black, red & earth leads each and the fourth has black (red tag), red and earth leads. On this latter I appreciate the black (red tag) is the switch lead.

The three blacks are all wired into a single terminal block, likewise the reds into another and the black (red tag) alone into a third with the red unconnected, I believe. The three earths were all fitted to a earth screw on the previous fitting. The new fitting has a four way terminal block marked live, neutral, earth and spare. So what goes with what? And the individual blocks on the lighting fitting don't seem big enough to take individual sets of three wires.

Many thanks for any help

Barrie

Barrie Womersley, December 2009

A ceiling Rose is such a neat thing - spaces for all the wires.

It's not surprising that you can't fit all the various wires into the terminal holes in your new light fitting - you will probably need some form of terminal box/strip well insulated and tucked up out of the way with a short run of cable from this to the new light...

In a ceiling Rose there are usually just two black wires joined together - Neutral in and Neutral out to the next rose - but you have three... It may be that the extra black wire is a neutral return from some other remote lamp but this is just a guess - it may be neutral to another ceiling rose.

In a ceiling rose there are usually three red wires joined together - Live in - Live Out and Live to the switch.

It's reasonable to assume that the red-sleeved black wire is switched live.

This leaves just one red unaccounted for - it may be that this is a switched live feed to another lamp and if this is so it will need to be joined to the Red-sleeved Black Switched-Live for the "other" lamp to work.

My answer here is just guesswork and conjecture based solely on the information provided - your safety should be your highest priority so take care...

Good luck...

Peccavi, December 2009