so in a continuation of wiring diagrams to do a lighting circuit it's been requested that
we look at two gang switches let's just remind ourselves what we mean by gangs
so if we look at this switch here this is a one gang switch there's only one switch on the front
and obviously these have got two making it a two gang and if we move them in we've got a
three and a four gang switch when we flip them over however something certainly different is
the fact that you can only get these in this style as two way switches now we're used to working with
two way switches when they look like this but we also know that we could get
a one gang switch which is one way and a one gang switch which is an intermediate switch
when we start looking at these switches all the switches in them are two way meaning if you did
need an intermediate switch you probably have to change style of switches to a grid switch
and we'll perhaps look at that in a future video so just bear in mind that the two gang
the four gang and a three gang switch when you turn them over are all two-way switches
in this video we're going to look at two lighting points and two switches so we're gonna have a two
gang switch and let's presume that this is in the kitchen area and this is in the dining room so
it's a kitchen diner and you want to be able to turn on your kitchen light and your dining room
lights separately from one location to help you as always i've left a link in the description where
you can download the drawings that we are going to use in this series of videos as we go through
it might be that i change or alter them slightly so you may have to adapt the drawings i give you
depending on where the series goes it's going to use the three plate method if you haven't already
studied the videos on the three plate method to start with please go back and do them we will
also go and look at this as the two plate method and then some variants on it as well
but today's one is going to have a two gang switch using the three plate method in order
to have these two lights kitchen and dining room area switched independently we often see a two
or possibly a three game switch at the bottom of the stairs with one light a switch doing say the
the lower ground floor and one doing the first floor so you can turn on the upstairs light when
you go to bed and normally when you get up there you can also turn it off and we'll look at that in
other presentations it could be that this is ground floor first floor and outside light
and that's near maybe the front door where you come in so there are areas which we're likely to
see a multi-gang light switch and we're going to concentrate two gang switches today so this switch
here will control this light and this switch here will control this light and i said to you
that these are two way switches however you can use a two way switch as a one way switch and we
will today so we've got a common and a common on our two switches L1 and L2 L1 and L2 and this one
quite handily says to use this as a one- switch use L1 so in both these switches to use them as
a one way switch is identified you use common and L1 great let's bring this one in here another two
gang switch turn it over the only information i've been given is common L1 and L2 so on these
switches you'd have to perhaps play around with it once you'd use the manufacturer for a while
you'd understand what they are but you'll find u is common in L1 okay and it might be correct
or you might have to swap it round to L2 it's not not the end of the world it just means that
when the switches are in and you test it might be there the wrong way around for on compared to off
and on compared to off therefore you just have to move it from say if you used L2 just pop it
into L1 and it reverses the throw of the switch so it will go the other way around them i'm sure
something you're going to cover in college if not you'll cover as your apprenticeship progresses
we're going to use one millimeter squared pvc pvc twin cpc cable often called onsite
twin and earth cable in order to take a feed from our consumer unit to light number one
and drop down to the switch feed across to light number two and a drop down to the switch
often on site this is 1.5 millimeters squared as well and we know we're going to have to identify
our circuit protective conductor with green and yellow sleeving so this will go on to identify
so on our drawing obviously we'll use green and yellow as i said it's a three plate method
if you haven't done the three plate method video series that's out there please go back and have a
look at it before we start looking at two gang and multi gang switches as we will in this mini series
but it's going to follow the same process these up here are wiring diagram drawings so here here and
here so these three positions that looks like the back of a two gang switch these look like
either a batten lamp holders bring in the dolly as well and a ceiling rose and pendant
so we've looked at these previously we've got a block of three block of three block of two
and likewise here block three block of three block of two and we've simulated that on here
with our blocks of two three and three and we're going to be using the connections that
we're really comfortable with from the three plate loop in method that was seen previously
i'm going to bring the supply in from the consumer unit down here the connections in
here aren't really helpful as a wiring diagram you'd be bringing your cpc in from your earth
block within your consumer unit you bring your neutral from your neutral block or RCBO etc
and then you've got your line conductor from the top of the fuse so this is representing the fuse
neutral link and our earth terminal we're going to bring in a twin and cpc cable from a consumer unit
it could have come from another room so if this was the kitchen and dining room it might have been
that the hallway or downstairs toilet area could have had another feed coming into here
and across to here but i'm going to bring it in from the consumer unit for this one
so let's bring the feed in first so let's start off with the cpc again you'll be using a rule
in order to get yours really neat let's bring our cpc into the light fitting from our consumer unit
as we said it's going to have green and yellow sleeving on it so let's strike it out with a
little bit of yellow just to make it look a little bit more like a cpc next bring the neutral
so it's this block of three here we tend not to go in the outside block terminals because that's
where the flex in this case for the ceiling rose and pendant would go in the outside ones that's
just common practice so you've got two really in the neutral block to choose from and i'm
just going to pop it into the first one so let's see how we're going to do i'm going to bring it
right down i'll bring it right down and across and bring my neutral down to here that's my neutral
and i need my permanent line and again i'm going to go in the loop in terminal block here the
block of three we've looked at it before it's not connected to anything the center block of three
and i'm going to bring out there again it's a brass block doesn't matter which of the holes
you come in or out of but let's come that first one there for me and i'm going to put that into
the top of the over current protection device so that's that cable brought in we've brought
in our pvc pvc twin cpc or twin and earth cable for us it's one millimetre squared
permanent line neutral cpc we've put the cpc in the earth terminal within the light fitting itself
so it's gone into the earth terminal within the light fin itself we've brought our neutral into
our block of three for our neutral and a permanent line into our center block of three which is our
loop we're going to bring a cable across now to the dining area so we've got to bring the feed
across so we're going to bring a permanent line neutral and cpc across from this light fitting
to this light fitting so let's start off with the cpc so let's bring that one across
that's the cpc going in
it's going to get a little bit crazy with cables as we move forward
so listen and understand and perhaps draw yours as you go along pause stop pause stop as you're
trying to work out where i'm putting each of the conductors so we're going to take the neutral next
so the lines can come out there so let's try bring a low neutral down let's bring on neutral across
and i'll go into that one just there and now our permanent line connection out and across
so there we go we've got our connections in here so we've brought our line across permanent line
into loop we've brought a neutral across into our neutral terminal and our cpc all in a twin and cpc
cable and it looks reasonably neat for a freehand job now but it's going to get a little bit messy
when we start bringing the cables down to the switches because there's going to be some crossing
over so just take your time to watch what we're doing next so as i said these are going to be
used as one way switches so when we come back to these two switches here i'm going to use common
and one of the other terminals so if we look here i've identified the two commons and they're always
opposite ups so we've got two commons there so a common and a common so common in both of
these will have the permanent line from the dining room and the permanent line from the kitchen into
common and then we'll have a switching line going back we're going to stick with twin and cpc cables
lots of colleges use twin cpc down to the switch and industry does in my college we used to use
twin brown which meant we didn't need to over sleeve or identify this the cable coming down
to the switch as we've talked about in loads of other presentations we'll have a permanent line
cpc and a blue conductor that is the switching line therefore we put a little bit of brown
sleeving on it to identify as a switching line and we will do on the drawing i'm going to try my
best to keep this neat now so i've got to bring this down and bring the cpc down the switching
line and the permanent line down so what shall we start with Gary should we start with the cpc
so my cpc in my cable i'm just going to keep let's keep that one down to here
and i'm just going to bring my cpc through the box and bring it around into there it's possible
that on if you're at college you're using a plastic box with a earth terminal in the back
so you can secure your cpcs in industry it might be that you've chased a metal box into the wall
and there is a terminal in the back for your cpcs and as you get to multi-gang switches you
might want to try slightly deeper box because it gives you a little bit more room especially
if we ended up making these both two way and we'll go on and look at that in other videos
so that's the cpc almost done let's just put the yellow on it
just to give it that look of a cpc so that's the first one down in our twin and cpc cable
we've got to bring down our permanent line our permanent line connection comes out of our
loop in terminal here and we've got to bring it into common so again this is where you're going
to get a little bit um clever with your cable so i'm going to bring that across there and then
i'm just going to kick it down so you can see it coming out of there i'm going to bring it into my
two gang switch and i'm going to pop it into my common terminal there that just leaves one
more so it's now the blue conductor which will be identified with brown sleeve and as our switching
line coming back and we know that's going to go this side of the lamp so we'll have a neutral this
side and a switching line this side in the block of two in order to control the light fitting when
we have it let's bring the blue one out of there so and we're going to make this look neat Gary
let's bring bring it down here and kick it across there i'm going to join it here and then i'm going
to bring it in to there so i've gone into that one there wouldn't matter which one i chose i just
tried to make it look a little bit more clear that it's gone into there so i've brought my cable back
which is line cpc and switching line but it's not a switching line to identify it with
brown sleeving so i'm going to put some brown sleeving on this end and brown sleeving on that
end in order that we've got control so the permanent line from the consumer unit comes
into loop comes down to the common when that blade is in this position over here
so we switch it the switching line comes back and goes up to here which would have my brown
going up to my light blue this side coming up to my light let's just put a a nice bright
lamp maybe in there so we've got a we've got a light shining them which is what we've got there
so that's the twin and cpc cable coming down with our permanent line cpc and switching line
and we connected it in brown one went into a common terminal and it didn't matter because
you can say we didn't know it went into either L1 or L2 to start with and when we do our dead tests
we'd be able to work out whether that was actually on or off if we found it was the wrong way round
all you do is come and take that blue conductor with the brown sleeving out and pop it into
either the L1 or L2 the opposite of what it was in in order to get it correct let's do the same
on this one here so we've got now a separate cable coming down twinning cpc in order to be
switched number two start again with the cpc i'll just keep that one down into here my cpc comes in
that's into that box and i now need to bring down into common my permanent line
i'm going to bring that one into here this switch is slightly easier to look neater
and then my blue conductor which isn't a neutral so i don't need it on this side i need it on this
side which is my switching line in my cable and i'm going to bring that down and i'm going to go
into this one just there so L1 or L2 didn't matter put some brown sleeving on both ends
so what we've got now is the permanent line comes from here into the loop and it comes
along then into the loop it comes down into this switch when i change the blade position
of the switch to here puts a switching line onto here which would be connected
to my lamp in order to make it illuminate i need a neutral on the other side
put a lamp in and there we have it in the current position that we're in both these switches the
lights are off by changing the position of the blade in other words operating the switch
you'll change the blade position and turn on the light we've got a two gang switch we've got this
one here in the kitchen controlled by this switch and the one next to it controls the dining area
light as well so we've added a two gang switch to our drawing using the three plate method
we can go on and look at this again and we can use the two plate method and see how that would
work and again if you haven't checked out that series of videos i recommend you do
in order to get comfortable with it before you start looking at multi-gang switches
that's pretty much it then isn't it our consumer unit light one light two and a two gang switch
the connections in here here and here not as clear as they could be but hopefully clear enough
can explain how you can control two lights in the same area separately from two switches we'll go on
and we'll also make this two way example being if this was a the ground floor light in by the
front door and this was the light at the top of the stairs we always be able to turn this one on
from another location so what we'll end up doing is making this one here in another drawing two
way so this would be the ground floor light and this would be the the landing light switch from
lower and upper okay so we'll look at that as well hopefully this is an introduction remember
you can download my notes from a link in the description in order if you want to follow
along with this as we looked at in this video presentation a two gang light switch controlling
independently two lights in the same area and as always i hope this video has been some help you