Lighting Spurs

[mrscalex]

First of all thanks to all those of you who have answered my questions to date on the new circuit I have now installed for my kitchen sockets. It all seems to work and I understood what I was doing which is usually a good sign!

I'm tackling the lights now. Is it permissible to run a lighting spur serially from an existing lighting spur? Or to run 2 spurs in parallel from 1 point on the main circuit?

Also, if in doubt, is it safest to use 1.5mm cable as opposed to 1 mm or is there a downside?

Thanks

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I'm tackling the lights now. Is it permissible to run a lighting spur serially from an existing lighting spur? Or to run 2 spurs in parallel from 1 point on the main circuit?

As a lighting circuit is a radial, you can branch off to your heart's content, although you should try to avoid an illogical and hard to troubleshoot rats nest..

Also, if in doubt, is it safest to use 1.5mm cable as opposed to 1 mm or is there a downside?

Assuming the usual 6A MCB, 1mm² is OK, and 1.5mm² is just harder to install, particularly in switch back-boxes. But if your existing stuff is 1.5mm², you should stick to the same.

 

[mrscalex]

Thanks for that. Judging from your reply can I assume you realised I meant to say these would be independantly switched spurs?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

No I didn't.

Why do you want to individually "switch" them? Are you talking about light switches?

 

[mrscalex]

We have a 5mx3m kitchen (now) but the lighting circuit (bizarely I know) is routed within a 1mx1m corner. So instead of extending this all round the kitchen to the vicinity of the wall lights, under cupboard lights and 10x downlighters, the question was aimed at taking off several live feeds as spurs and switching these indvidually to the fittings.

I'd be interested to know the answer still but I have found a compromise solution now where I can just extend the lighting circuit a little and avoid the use of spurs.

A lot of this has to do with trying to keep all jointed connections within access of the downlighter cut-outs. We don't want junction boxes hidden under the ceiling do we?!