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Hi,

I'm a casual DIYer - I'm normally happy doing like for like swap outs of electrical switches and sockets but not comfortable doing any more than that. One of our light switches has got quite stiff to push so we thought as our downstairs light switches are all plain white plastic ones this was a good opportunity to swap them all over for nice metal ones.

I've done 3 of them no problem and they are all working fine. The last one I came to though was the 2-way switch controlling the stair light.

I swapped it out and wired it exactly as it was but it didn't work. I've checked all the connections and they are secure so I wondered if I have a faulty switch. I put the original switch back but it's still dead. I wondered if the bulb had popped so tested it in a different socket and it's fine.

I've taken the faceplate off the corresponding switch at the top of the stairs and it looks identical to the one I've been messing with so I'm scratching my head.

I'd be grateful for any tips or advice around how I could debug this because I'm running out of ideas!

Cheers

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Solved it! In the unlikely event that some other poor bugger finds themselves with the same problem, it turned out to be due to the creative/lazy way the previous resident had wired the lights up.

When I was replacing one of the other light switches, upon removing the faceplate I'd found what appeared to be a loose wire floating about in the back box. I dismissed it as the typical shoddiness we've encountered numerous times when carrying out repairs, covered the exposed wire with electrical tape and put the new socket over it. It turned out not to have been loose, it had just not been secured properly and must have popped out when I removed the faceplate.

This switch (while in theory unrelated to the stair lights) is almost directly below the 2-way switch on the landing, so they had run the live cable to that instead of the corresponding switch at the bottom of the stairs, which also explains why I appeared to be a wire short when compared to all the example circuit diagrams Google was giving me.

Still, fixed now, but most importantly I'm not losing my mind after all!