Any Sparks around ? - 2 Gang Dimmer

tlogic

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Hi,

one of ceiling lights in our living room has stopped working. I think it had something to do with the old dimmer switch becuase it use to make a buzzing noise when ever a light was switched on and overtime it may have developed a fault.

My old 2 gang dimmer had one 'c' terminal and two of each of the L1 & L2 terminals. The new dimmer switch has two of each terminals.
x2 'c' terminal and x2 L1 & L2 terminals.

I've got three wires comming out the wall. Two reds which one is constantly live, and one black wire. The old dimmer the black and one of the red wires were connected to both the L1 terminals and the red live wire conncted to the 'C' terminal.

As the new dimmer switch has two 'C' terminals , do I have to put a link wire in-between both of the 'C' terminals because only one lights currently works with the new dimmer.

No power is going to one of the light fitting either.

cheers.
 
Last edited:
Hi tlogic.
I think that the dimmer from the shed is an intermediate switch and you can`t use it for the damaged switch. Dimmers have written on the back the max load that they can take and I think the lights you have are at the top of that limit. If lets say your dimmer is rated at 100W and on the circuit you have lights totalling 100W then your dimmer is going to make a buzzing noise when the lights are fully on. What I would recommend is go to b&q or screwfix and get a dimmer withe the same C, L1 and L2 connections and a bigger wattage. I hope you marked which black cable was to L1 and which to L2.
Hope that helps.
 
Hi tlogic.
I think that the dimmer from the shed is an intermediate switch and you can`t use it for the damaged switch. Dimmers have written on the back the max load that they can take and I think the lights you have are at the top of that limit. If lets say your dimmer is rated at 100W and on the circuit you have lights totalling 100W then your dimmer is going to make a buzzing noise when the lights are fully on. What I would recommend is go to b&q or screwfix and get a dimmer withe the same C, L1 and L2 connections and a bigger wattage. I hope you marked which black cable was to L1 and which to L2.
Hope that helps.

Hi Mishu,

Thanks for the reply. The dimmer I found in the shed has a max load of 600w. All the light bulbs will output 400w max. The spare switch I found in the shed isn't an intermediate switch (i think) because when I connect a live wire in the 'c' terminal that one light will work but the other one won't work becuase I haven't got a cable going into the other 'C' terminal. I think it will be easier if I pop down to B&Q and buy a switch with the same configuration as the old one.
 
All sorted now thanks. I was missing a live link wire between the two 'C' terminals. Both lights work now without any problems. Thanks for all the input.

cheers
 
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