"Steve" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I'm hoping you can give some advice.

We recently moved into a 3 year old house. After a few days we noticed
something odd with the lights. Basically unless the downstairs hall light
is switched on, the lounge and dining room lights will not function.

I'm just trying to decide what to do. If it is going to be complicated to
fix then I think I'll just live with it as a "feature".

TIA

Steve.

First guess is that when the electrician (or whatever) wired on from the
hall light to the lounge lights, instead of extending the power circuit s/he
took the power for the lounge off the switch circuit for the hall.

Not an impossible mistake to make.
Lighting is usually four sets of wires.

1) Power in.
2) Power out.
{These share the same terminals}
3) Live to switch and back (goes on the red wire comes back on the black
wire).
4) 'Switch return' to light (red joined to black above) and neutral to light
(black joins neutral on power circuit)

All the earths should also join :-)

There are two main ways of wiring lighting:
(1) All the wires into a ceiling rose
(2) Junction box between floors/in loft.

So if you can find the junction e.g. in ceiling rose it is straighforward to
fix.
If the circuit has been wired through junction boxes you may have to lift
the bedroom or landing floor to get at the wiring.

In either case you need a meter to check which wires are live all the time
and which are only live when the switch in on.

Of more concern s that you have faulty wiring.
If there is one fault there may be more.
It could be wise to have the whole house safety checked by a qualified
electrician.

If the house has dodgy wiring then you may have some comeback on the
vendors; if the house is only 3 years old you may have a claim under any
warranty which came with the house (assuming the fault is original and not
due to hacking by the previous owner).

It could be as simple as someone replacing the hall light and conecting the
new light up wrongly.
On the other hand........

HTH
Dave R