Two Way lighting problem

[Nosparky]

HELP! I have a major problem with my living room lighting. The other day as I was taking a look at my living room light in preparation for installing a ceiling fan and due to the fact that I neglected to turn off the Circut breaker as well as the terrible way the wiring was done I popped the circut breaker as I unscrewed the light fixture. After attempting to just screw the fixture back in place and reset the breaker, it popped again. The only way to make it not pop was to disassemble the ad hoc wiring connections that were above the fixture. I was then able to reset the breaker, however, all my ground floor lighting was inoperative. Through many diagrams from this website as well as trying to connect the wires myself from what I remembered about how they were set up, the only way to get my lights on was to connect the black wire from the power source to the ground wires?!? This completely confused me and I am at a loss. As I have said I have tried all of the diagrams on this site that match my living room light setup with no luck. Here is the set up.

At the fixture:
Three leads one power source, one to switch, one to second fixture.
One Black one Red and one Ground per lead.

Two wall switches connected together and not touched other that looking at them.

I need to know what happened and how to remedy the situation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ml1936]

You have your feed, a loop and a switch wire my friend. The easiest way to tell which one is the switch wire is to use a multimeter, do you have one?

 

[Spark123]

The earth conductor is at or very close to the same potential of neutral conductor, if there is now a broken neutral conductor then you need to trace it. The fact that connecting neutral and earth together makes it work verifies this, (please note though it is illegal for a consumer to combine the neutral and earth conductors within their premises.)
Is this the first light in the circuit?

 

[Nosparky]

It is the first light controlled by the two switches but is apparently connected with the rest of the ground floor lighting Circut.

I know which one wire is the feed, which one os the loop and which one is the switch. It has not helped to know this so far since I have followed the diagrams given on this site in reference section with no results.

Any Ideas?

 

[Spark123]

If this is the first light in the circuit the feed wire will come directly from the consumer unit, can you check the end in the consumer unit? Please remember to switch the CU off and take care of where the meter tails enter as these will be still live.

 

[Nosparky]

By consumer unit you mean what, the Breaker box? What exactly am I checking?

 

[Spark123]

Yes, the breaker box. Check that the neutral wire for the lighting circuit is secure and not damaged in any way, you may need to follow the red wire from the breaker to the cable to identify the correct black neutral wire, or if a good spark did it then the neutral should be in the correctly numbered terminal from the left as the MCB is.

 

[Nosparky]

I cannot do that right now, (not at the house) but if it was damaged would connecting the black wire to the ground enable the rest of the ground floor lighting to work? Why is that happening, can you explain it in easy to understand terms. I feel like if I just understood what was happening I could figure out how to fix it. As a side note, is the neutral the red or black wire?

 

[Spark123]

You should not connect the black and earth wires together as it is considered too dangerous and as I said before, illegal. It may work but it is not safe. The reason that it works when you do this is the neutral and earth are at (or very close to) the same potential as in a TN system (electric supply where the supply company provide you with an earth terminal) the earth and neutral conductors are connected together at the supply transformer or where the supply enters your premises, in other words you are using the earthing conductor as a neutral.

 

[Nosparky]

So how do I remedy the situation?

 

[Spark123]

Have you checked the neutral at the CU? Is there anything obviously wrong? **all this is done with the power off** remove the lighting circuit neutral from its terminal and connect it to the earth terminal. With your multimeter set to the lowest ohms range, at the light measure the resistance between the feed wire neutral and earth. If this comes back as infinity then the neutral wire in this cable is damaged and the cable from the CU to the light (I'm assuming this is how it is run as you say it is the 1st light in the circuit). The new cable will need to follow the same route as the old one.

 

[Nosparky]

I am in over my head, I called a spark... Thanks for all of your help.