One of my DIY tasks this weekend was swapping in a couple of new light fittings in the front room. It was a bit easier than when I did the bathroom one a couple of years ago. At least this time round I knew that a tripped master RCD on the consumer board flicks to halfway rather than wasting a whole day wiring and rewiring with nothing seeming to work. It was still fairly fraught though, standing at the top of a stepladder and trying to wrangle the right bits of wire into the correct holes of the terminal block and get them fastened securely.
Eventually, with Jane’s help, I got the first one done but before embarking on the second, I popped out to our local branch of Screwfix and picked up some of the Wago connectors I had read about while trying to get unstuck. With these, you can connect wires together by pushing them into the appropriate slots. By only having to deal with one wire at a time rather than juggling multiple connections in a tight space and by not also having to fiddle with a screwdriver they promised to make the job a lot easier.
It turns out that I’d picked the hard light to start on. The second one was the end of the circuit and so had less wires to juggle with. I might even have been able to manage it without the Wago connectors but I threw in a two way one for the live loop. It also helped that this time I was freshly aware that the socket on the light fitting labelled “live” actually wanted the neutral wire from the switch (which is ideally marked with some insulating tape and becomes referred to as the “sleeved live”). Sorted – and now I have a box full of other useful connectors next time I have a similar job come up.