Hi all,

first of all, please know that a registered electrician will do the work, I am not trying to get into discussions about what the homeowner can do and what not... my query revolves around a certain detail of the wiring regulations which I would like to discuss with someone familiar with this document. I am NOT an electrician myself but I consider I have a degree of understanding of how things work.

I am looking at having a house extension done, a couple of new bedrooms, so all work will be new (starting with a new submain from the existing meter, a new switchboard, wiring, etc). So all will be "clean" and new.

[1] Have you noticed in lots of movies, when they enter the room and flick the lights on, it is not the lights in the ceiling coming on... but all sorts of lamps placed everywhere around the room. That tells me that the light switch controls the wall points where these lamps are plugged into. Question: would something like this be tolerated by the NZ wiring rules?

[2] Would this be a light circuit, or a power circuit? Does it matter? Worse case scenario is a power circuit. How many wall points can I have on such circuit?

[3] What if in the future you want to use the power point for actual power and not controlled by the light switch? I am looking at having "dual supply" to these wall points, one from the "light switch" and another one branched off before this switch. Each wall point will have a switch to connect that wall point to "lights" or to "power" circuit. This would provide the maximum of flexibility for future use of the wall points... but can such configuration be tolerated by the NZ rules?

[4] can this switching between "power" and "lights" function be done by the extra switch you can get onto most (single or double) power points? It would be great, as that is just a fairly standard fitting readily available. The only issue is to get that switch as "double throw" and not "single throw" - most of them appear to be double throw anyway?

[5] would the RCD trip when this switch does the switching between the two "live" feeds? Let's remember, they both come from the same live wire from switchboard, they branch off where the wall light switch is. Whatever comes through the live from the swicthboard will return there, regardless if it reaches the wall points through "red" or "blue" core of the cabling.

[6] I am planning to ask 4-core wire to be used - I guess it would be more elegant, but if it is more expensive than twice the standard 3-core TPS then let them run two cables...


I am looking at having at least a minimum of understanding of the implications before taking it to an electrician for pricing the whole extension work, I do not want to come up with stupid ideas when talking about this intention, so he can think I have no idea what I am doing and consequently quote me a ridiculous sum... just because "it is not standard"...


Many thanks for your time.