Poundland 50p switch teardown 

True

Pretty sure there's already comments on this but just stating just in case the third non-compliant method what we call generally three-way switching in the United States is what is often referred to here as Charter wiring at least one variant of this there's a lot of other non-compliant stuff as well regarding commonly done Back in the Day stuff with various combinations of three switching some of which was to save for example in a detached garage oftentimes you would have overhead wiring between the house and garage and you would need more desire to have an unswitched receptacle and the light of course switch separately but be able to be controlled from both the house and garage sometimes although this may have been an outdoor light but there was one method of wiring that was common in today but now not approved where has to save one overhead wire back in the day this was significant and also less work and quicker there are some really odd ones out there that can really get your head spinning when you can't figure out what's going what's a fouled up three-way switch thinking there's other problems going on or like an open wire somewhere for a problem in a non-existent junction box or otherwise and it was just one of those Oddball ones that was just throwing you for a loop sometimes also someone abandons a three-way converting it into just a standard switch and unbenounced everything is still open place and yep of course Dennis realize oh yeah that's just abandoned place and realize that was just something simple and there you go in there there's that weird case where someone installs a pull chain fixture and completely removes all the other switches for no apparent reason and yet no sign of power being tapped off perhaps another light or receptacle elsewhere and of course it's where you really need the original switch location to actually make the area practical

God forbid we all agree on a standard. Someone should come to with a standard to select world standards then we'll be good

@@Stealth86651 actually we all look on the standard the US would still do it differently

I say this earnestly - I think there's enough deviation between English and American as languages that they should be considered different. So what they speak in the USA should be considered "American" and everything in the Commonwealth "English". It's as different as Scots is to English, or Slovak is to Czech. It means that you can make clearer terminology changes, and things like subtitles or closed captions can be translated between the two.

Maybe not. As Clive's bitch instructions made clear, before doing a project, people should learn a bit about electrical installation anyway. Not sure if this also applies to cacti.

There are no neutrals, so the worse thing that can happen is that the 2-way won't work properly

Agreed!

Wonder how many people will take the 50p switch back to the shop saying it’s not working properly?

I'm surprised selling such an item with such misleading instructions is actually legal

That's an excellent way to consider it. I'm a EE by education and I still had to spend too long trying to grasp this when I replaced all the builder grade switches in my home. I'll also let folks know a good 4-way switch is about $15 each here, vs $2 for a decent "standard" switch.

Thank you for this, it makes it so much simpler.

I'm not an electrician or anything, but never had any real issues understanding how 2 switches worked.... But 3 breaks my brain 😂

We call the middle one an "Intermediate".

I love it when LDs / set designers put this level of detail in!

@@martinwhitaker5096 Trust me, if I don't, somebody will notice. In "The Night Alive" a coin-operated electric meter is prominently featured. These simply don't exist in the US, so I bought one on Ebay. it came all the way from East Sussex, and to my surprise, it still had a pound coin in the cashbox. I got a discount!

@@martinwhitaker5096 Absolutely! Often goes wrong in major productions. Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel had some scenes set in what I assume was the early 1940s and there were white plastic rocker switches all over the place, specifically East German ones from the 1980s. I think these scenes were filmed in a real location rather than a studio set so they probably couldn't change the electrics. Besides, with this being Anderson they probably didn't think twice about inconguous details, might even have included them deliberately.

@@Ragnar8504 And in 'The Shining' they have a UK telly (probably a PYE or similar) in the 'REDRUM' scene when they wouldn't have had them if it was filmed in the US. I was looking out for UK wall sockets and switches but they all seem to be well hidden behind furniture. There are probably some I missed.

What an awesome job you have sir! Nearly as good as Clive's 😜 You efforts are no doubt great ✌🏽

wow. you have a very different opinion of what is interesting, compared to myself. well done. i always appreciate someone obsessing over fairly pointless (to me) details.

okay

So the Carter System I think?

Well that's terrifying.

Also has the downside that you would need to run "life" and neutral back to the panel from both the switches.

@@Species1571 Not a downside if the switches are far apart and near sockets and such with both live and neutral present. In which case you have the advantage of only needing to run one wire from switch to bulb to switch, the bulb usually being somewhere between the switches.

@@literarynick The Edison socket terrifies me regardless. I don't trust the neutral either.

yeah, I usually use three-wire two-way switching, generally I use an SDI and a twin-active cable for the interconnection between the switches because that's what I have on hand. Technically under AS3000 you can use a 2C+E if you sleeve the exposed portion of the earth conductor in an an appropriate colour, but it still makes me squirmy to use an "earth" conductor for current even if the ends have been recoloured.

@@SomeMorganSomewhere Very poor practice using 2C + E that way. Just buy the correct twin active TPS and single core TPS to do a switch drop. At 1mm^2 they are small cables and easily drawn down.

Same with my step-dad when he decided to wire the lights, and for an added bonus he got one of the switch plates rotated 90 degrees! He never did fix it 🤷

@@BTW... yeah, I agree, that's why I don't use the 2C+E method ;)

@@merseyviking Rotated 90deg so it indicated a 2-way circuit? Suppose so.. not hard to do with some switchplates that can accommodate 6 clip in switch mechanisms. I might try that with a difficult to operate when my hands full kitchen 2-way I've at home.

Poing! "Oh, that's not good!"

@@b3j8 "One moment, please."

AKA 'A ping- fuckit'

Get out of my mind!

“A few moments later”. Out comes the eye patch.

Hmm, I've only ran across mercury in thermostats, old car trrunk light switches and light switches where a spark might make things go boom.

There's a video I got recommended ages ago, where someone was claiming the mercury switch was the 'ultimate switch' with '0 maintenance' etc. and that the only reason it's banned is because of big electric or something lol

​@@Stevo_1998They don't bounce, normal snappy switches will switch on and off many times on a really tiny timescale. The contacts also never wear out, because any arc or oxide will float. They can also directly pass quite a lot of current. They'll essentially always work. Not quite enough to justify making more, but in certain applications they were unbeatable, like tipover switches for space heaters.

I personally love clickiness in a switch, but there were a couple in my childhood home that weren't satisfying. I also get that one wouldn't want clickiness in their switch and I love the use of mercury as a solution. There has to be some applications where a smooth switch feels more "right" than a clicky one, but I can't think of any at the top of my head.

@@Klaevin I recall the early clicky switches for room lights always sounded like throwing a breaker.

Would that be an issue for AC/50Hz?

​​@@AdityaMehendaleAs compared to 60hz? The difference in arcing potential across the switching contacts between 50hz and 60hz is minimal with the 50hz mains having a slightly more potential for destructive potential arcing compared to 60hz, with the higher voltage of the UK domestic mains compared to the US domestic mains more likely to have an effect on arcing potential. Point of interest, if the mains frequency was reduced to dc voltage or near so, the switch would probably self-destruct on the first or second switching under load due to the prolonged sustaining arcing and short separation of the switch contacts when opened, even with only around 100 volts input.

@@trevorkrause7220 I wasn't comparing 50/60, rather was wondering whether arcing shall be a problem at all, for the ~ 10ms that the arc exists.

@@AdityaMehendale Yes, absolutely! I've heard several stories of modern switches that replaced ancient DC-rated rotary or toggle switches burning out within months or even weeks in that setup.

Here in India if I see a wire with a different color I always assume that the electrician ran out of the wire he was using and had to run out and buy some more and got some with a different color.

1 person thrusting towards the sky, another hurtling towards the ground. As they meet at about 500 feet: "Do you know anything about parachutes"? "No, do you know anything about gas ovens"?

It took me precisely one week to get trained as a UK certified domestic gas 'engineer'. Then I could go and mess with heating installations, cookers, fires and so on. Then it took three years to become competent. (And I'm not a slow learner).

I know it as Hamburger Schaltung too. I heard it was used in the post war but thankfully its not legal anymore. i always use the basic version that Clive drew first

I also know it as "Hamburger Sparschaltung" (Hamburg economy wiring), because assuming that you have live & neutral for free anyhow at the switches (e.g. sourced from a socket nearby), any extra conductor between the switches requires extra conductors. The first variant shown in the video requires two extra conductors, the central one requires three(!) extra conductors, whereas the non-compliant one only requires one extra conductor. The central variant is nice if you *don't* have the grid near one of the switches, because you get "live in" and "load out" at the same end.

yes of corse, i know only eltako, and this switch is for lamp with 2 loads

@@tw11tube The method gets especially interesting in a TN-C system ("klassische Nullung"). I remember reading about someone who managed to somehow cobble a switched socket into one of these circuits that then had live earth contacts half the time. Also the setup only works with DC-rated switches, modern ones just arc and burn out fairly quickly.

@@Ragnar8504 Well, actually you can't install a socket with "klassische Nullung" (providing PE by connecting it to N inside the socket) at the load position of the "Hamburger Schaltung", as *there* *is* *no* *N* conductor, just two conductors that might potentially be live. So this installation was a failed attempt at trying to provide "klassische Nullung". The worst I experienced in this regard was sockets with missing PE (due to broken "klassische Nullung", so chassis was at 110V through the interference suppression caps, which provided an uncomfortable tingling experience. I heard about installations in West Berlin that operated on 220V 3-phase current (i.e. 220V live-to-live, *not* 380V 3-phase current with 220V live-to-neutral) well into the 1970s, so standard german household appliances were connected between two live connections. If the sockets in that installation provided PE at all, it surely had to be provided using a dedicated conductor.

That would be "nephew Thomas." He's very handy.

I thought it was called the Carter system?

A friend of mine discovered that the switches at the top and bottom of the stairway in his 19th century house were wired this way when he tried to install X10 switches for remote control.

The problem with this style is that when you are turning devices on and off (especially high power devices) power could find a shorter path through the bulb than through the electric line so the light will be slightly blinking.

@@SquishyZoran It has dozens of names I think.

It isn't good being that guy who simps, trust me I've been there trying to be the tech guy who fixes things for people aka women.

When I moved into my old house there was a two way switch near the front door and the other switch at the end of the hall, no idea how it was wired, one switch only had 2 wires going to it. you could turn it on or off from either switch, but if you turned it on at the door you had to turn it off at the same switch! Just to add more confusion, one switch lit the lamp at half brightness. I measured the voltage at the socket, one switch gave 240 volts, the other only 165 volts! no idea why. I fixed it by using an led lamp, the regulator in the lamp sorted out the voltage! (didn't want to start chipping the plaster off the wall to trace the cables!)

​@@zebo-the-fatThat sounds like a serious wiring error and bodging round it isn't fixing it. You don't have to chip away plaster to trace wires if you turn off the supply and use a continuity tester. Now that you're aware that there's a problem, if you can't fix it yourself it would be negligent of you not to call in someone who can.

@@johnm2012 Probably true, but I have since moved house and the guy that bought my old place said he was going to have it rewired anyway :)

I suspect ​it is taking its supply from some other equipment in series. IE. Two 6v bulbs wired in series will operate on 12v perfectly, two 12v in series they light up dimly, because they would require 24v. I would recommend you talk to a professional about this! To get a clue, as to where the power is coming from turn off all breakers ( or remove fuses ) then find out which breaker is feeding your lights and from there find out what other equipment is being supplied on this circuit, and possibly the location of the low voltage supply. Hope this helps, I no expert, mostly work low voltage DC

In Sweden it's called trappkoppling (stair switch) because you often have two-ways at the top and bottom of the stairs. The German term is "Wechselschalter", alternating switch, a fairly accurate description of what a 2-way switch does.

The last one is an XOR that will kill you in the dark.

2 switches 1 cm apart, why should that be? 2 hand safety circuit fits better. (and)=Xor?

@@mekkertroniker2002 It wouldn't be wired up with both of those switches. It would be wired up to another panel somewhere else

@@mekkertroniker2002 For 2 separate lights, or eg for light and a fan/ac combo

Depends on what you're trying to achieve. In Germany, method two is known as the "wire saving 2-way" because you've got a permanent live at each switch and can easily add a neutral by running a five-core cable. With method 1 you need a six-core on one side.

@@Ragnar8504 indeed Ragnar, unfortunately here in Ireland we use single core double insulated cables for lighting only. The live (phase) conductor loops to the light switches and the neutral conductor loops to each lighting load. This is purely a post war copper saving method that never should have survived the 70s, but is still allowed. So in a fault condition you will have both conductors being live at any single point. I do not use this method and prefer multi core cables as they are safer, but yes they use a lot of unnecessary copper.

@@tonywebb9909 I'm in Austria where most people use singles in conduit and often junction boxes in the upper safe zone of the walls. Unless you've got a socket by the switch, the wiring is exactly as you describe, live loops down (in our case from the junction box rather than the light), switched live back up and the neutral only goes from the JB to the light. Never had any problems with that. I did use the other two-way setup once because the customer wanted multiple two-way circuits in a place with particularly flimsy walls so even one 20 mm conduit was pushing the limits, going up to 25 or running multiple conduits wasn't an option. It's also handy in places like basements or garages with exposed cables.

I think the design and accepted usage of the accessories is also a factor. AIUI US lightswitches are typically designed for only 1 wire per terminal, while in the UK we use a different style of terminals and think nothing of putting up to three wires in a terminal. This changes which wiring method requires the least splices for a typical installation.

I did that too.

LED lamps spoil that game for the upcoming generation because the power supply usually smooths out the flicker: spoilsports!

Me too! With the added incentive that I could hear the interference on the TV downstairs, and my parents complaining..

I discovered that where I used to live, if I had the oven, computer, PS4, and the AC on, and then tried to do vacuum cleaning, the lights would flicker. The main breaker had a 30A (3 kW) limit.

Hooligan!😉

Wouldn't you get capacitive coupling regardless of which method is used?

I don't recall Clive ever drawing a fist, though he did a nasty number on his hand recently. :P

Maybe the light bulb is counted as one of the 'ways'?

Probably for a similar reason a 3-way intersection is named that. If you consider the wires, there are 3 paths. Anything coming in one of these paths have 2 different paths they can take depending on the switch. Likewise, for the 4 way switch, there are 4 paths/wires. But now you can't go through every path.

The US terminology counts the terminals to the switch: it's a switch having three wires going into it, so they figure three ways into the switch. The UK naming counts the number of wires that are controlled by the switch, hence two way. The middle switch when needing to control from three locations is logically known in the US as four way, again counting the total connections. In the UK it's usually known as an intermediate switch, to give DIY electricians a clue about where it goes in the circuit. Both naming systems make sense, once you grasp the logic behind them: and both look equally daft to someone only familiar with the other way of naming. Similarly with the logic of how e count the floor number in a building -- logical on each side of the pond but confusing to visitors

I assume you are referring to the drawing at 3:40? XD Also, I feel like Pikachu is the LEAST likely to be affected by being plugged in!

​@@nimoy007 Very good point!

Sounds like the way we do it in continental Europe.

You could do that with the old MK toggle switches, but not the newer Logic ones.

I once had an older (80s I think) Legrand switch get stuck in that middle position, probably due to some dirt having gotten inside during the previous renovation. Working it a few times fixed the problem and it's still there, over 20 years later.

Also a spark helps in the process of designing and building a new house when your old one had a gas leak. Provided you were away on holiday at the time, of course.

But they're certified electrical professionals (in a half day seminar).

@@KJ6EAD I think NOT. Certified lower than dog poo perhaps.

Pretty sure proper training and certification is white supremacy.

Bonus danger: In North America where we have split phase, there are two different "Live" that are 240v apart and 180 degrees out of phase. If you don't use the same leg for both ends you have created a dead short across 240v...

​@@Smidge204 Many places in Europe have 3 phase (even in a small apartment), with about 400V between phases (230V phase2neutral)

@@Smidge204 Can't be 180 phase shift. It's 120 phase difference AND there are 3 phases available in the street distribution network. I guess it is possible to have those 'spit phases' appear on a lighting circuit there in USA, because any unqualified DIY moron can wire up a home legally there. 🤦‍♂

@@BTW... Yes, the wiring in most residential homes has two phases, 180 degrees apart. A single phase from the grid is fed to a center-tapped transformer, and each end of the transformer's output becomes one of the phases, with the center tap being neutral.

The hallway example mentioned in another reply is the perfect motivating example for the "Chicago 3-way". At the ends of the hallway, near the switches, you might have outlets as well, so L+N are already at both ends. Now the only wiring you need to strap to the lamp in the center of the hallway is a single conductor from either end, which beats all the other solutions in the amount of conductors used. Thankfully, "amount of conductors used" is not a valid reason to violate code.

10A

A classmate once told me that his mom (a maths teacher) had replaced the kitchen light switch. Now they could either have the light on or listen to the radio but not both (she connected the live feed to the socket next to the switch to L2 rather than Com together with the feed in). I told him it was an easy fix but he politely declined, they'd gotten so used to this state of things they didn't want to change it.

The California 3-way can be code-compliant, as long as you meet the neutral requirements. But the same is true of the "correct" method. The code doesn't actually require a neutral in every box. It requires a neutral in at least one box, or in every box that isn't visible from the other boxes. The idea seems to be that if the box could contain a motion-sensing switch, it needs a neutral. It's just easier to put a neutral in every box than it is to explain the actual requirements.

In the US there was a line of devices branded as "Despard" built just like that. They were versatile, but very expensive and not durable.

Yes lucky by me mixed sockets and lights are not common, so the styles can be similar, but not mix and match.

​@@mxslick50 as an electrician from Germany that traveled to the us and Canada several times it still amazes me what differece in electricial standards the US has compared to most of the West. Some stuff you guys use every day is something I haven't seen here in Germany for decades. Switches and sockets with seperate switching mechanism and seperate frames / inleys / styles are completely normale here for well over 4 decades now

I like the candles in the movies - they light one single candle and its like the whole room is in daylight 😂

I like the sci fi movies with booms and whooshes in the vacuum of space when ships fire on each other.

That is because in larger systems, there is a large contactor (just a power relay) instead of a small switch as the kind shown in the video. And contactors are *loud*. They really do the "boom" seen in the movies, especially if the place is empty! Some places even have sequencers to spread the large startup load along a few seconds, resulting in the "boom boom boom..." you mentioned.

actually that is right. In a large place you don't just "turn on the lights" you operate a switch and a bunch of control electronics takes over and switches the lights on in banks through relays (or similar) There could be kilowatts being switched on each bank, they make a bit of a thump

@@MCPicoli You are right, in this case the movies are actually authentic.

These days you'd probably replace the whole lot with motion detectors. You can also get latching relays to replace the timer without any changes to the wiring. Or just set the timer to more than 15 seconds 😅

Even too small a contact gap can cause a short, and all rocker switches that I know of (and US "silent" toggles) don't have a large enough contact gap. Apparently these switches fail within a few months if you try that stunt.

Your 'way' of dimmer installation is hazardous because the supply Active is always on at the dimmer module.

@@BTW... A valid observation. I should have mentioned that the dimmer has an integral on-off switch that does cut the current.

By Grapthar's hammer, what a savings!