"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Novice DIY'er" writes:
Thanks for al the replies. Will act upon the replies. I have a question
though, what does it mean when you say an appliance is 'double
insulated'? I
have a feeling the light I 'fitted' in the other room was this since
there
were only two cables and it works!

It means it was designed to be safe with no earth connection.
There are always two layers of insulation between live parts
and anything you could touch. There will be a symbol on it
somewhere with two squares, one inside the other, and no
provision for connecting an earth.

Also please bear in mind that if you connect up your new light ignoring the
earth connection, that will 'work' too!; this is a safety issue here.

I certainly think it's worth investigating the fixed cable in the attic; it
seems strange that you would have earthed cable going to the switch and
non-earthed cable elsewhere. As others have said, in the olden days
non-earthed lighting was the norm, but your apparent mixture of the two
sounds odd. My guess is someone's just (wrongly) chopped off the earth wire
in the cable leading to your light fitting, because the previous fitting
maybe didn't need an earth.

David