Wiring Bathroom Lights & Extractor Fan

[jonnyspeed]

Hello all. I love this site as so many questions i've pondered have been answered. I often spend time just reading through posts to try and gain a better overall understanding of the electrical industry and any advice given.

Hopefully this question can be answered -

I have recently begun rewiring my upstairs lighting and now onto the final part in the bathroom. There are 4x50w halogen lights with no earthing on them so i am assuming that they are double insulated, but they have no double square on them? Also a fan was recently installed by an electrician and two more 50w lights IP rated above the bath. These two 50w lights do have earthing on them and are connected to the 3 pole isolator along with the fan. Is this right? There seems to be two seperate circuits, one connecting the non earthed lights together and one connecting the earthed lights and the fan together. Both operated from the pull cord switch via JB. This has confused me because i am not sure whether i can just link all the lights together to a JB(even though only 2 are earthed) and then connect the fan with the 3 core cable and isolator to the same JB and then off to the switch.

My thoughts were to do the latter but are both acceptable or will there be a problem when certifying etc?

Sorry if this is a confusing read. Am I not seeing something obvious here?

Jonny

 

[sparkytim]

Hi

Are you sure the new 50 Watt lights need an earth? they may have an earth "parking" terminal at the connector block.

No problem with connecting class two and class one fittings on the same circuit, as long as you have an earth available at all lighting points.

 

[jonnyspeed]

The two 50w lights have been earthed via nut and bolt onto the metal plating.

Was the electrician right to have the two lights fitted directly to the isolator?

 

[Evans Electric]

The 3 pole isolator is usually for the fan only but it doesn't matter if it switches the lights off too.

 

[sparkytim]

Are these the same lights YOU put a nut and bolt thru to earth in July?

 

[jonnyspeed]

yes and no I was about start work on the upstairs lighting back then but never got round to doing it due to change in circumstances. Never drilled holes for nuts & bolts as figured it wasn't needed. The two lights with the earthing nut&bolts look fairly new and were installed by the sparky. Doesn't look like they've been altered in any way either.

So i'm going to put all the lights on one circuit and the fan and isolator on the other and connect them via JB to switch. This sound right? ray

 

[sparkytim]

Ok, so how are you going to trigger the fan timer?

 

[initforthemoney]

This work will also need certifying and notifying to LABC.

 

[jonnyspeed]

ok, so 3 core cable from isolator, permanent live, switched live and neutral to JB. When the light comes on the two lives activate the fan and when light goes off fan still runs for a little bit?

 

[sparkytim]

Sounds ok, how is that different to what you had before?

 

[jonnyspeed]

I wasn't sure whether the two lights fed from the isolator were correct as i haven't encountered it before. Also I guess I just needed to ask you guys for peace of mind and guidance

 

[Apache]

I wasn't sure whether the two lights fed from the isolator were correct as i haven't encountered it before. Also I guess I just needed to ask you guys for peace of mind and guidance

Sparky likely picked up an earth from where most convenient?

 

[jonnyspeed]

I think your right. Looking through the wiring i see that the earths had been cut on some of the lights and not connected together via junction boxes so the sparky must have picked it up from most convenient earth as you mentioned. that explains why lights were wired to the isolator. Thanks for your help guys. Problem Solved! :Applaud