Er what does this switch do?

Today we had Dave the electrician here for his third visit trying to sort out the wiring in the house. This started as a 4 to 5 hour job to replace the consumer panel but has ended up as some sort of magical mystery tour of sockets, spurs and lights to enable the wiring to be certified. It is clear that there have been several phases of wiring all done by an enthusiastic amateur with no training. Still we seem to be getting there and probably only need one more day of Dave's time, excluding the mobile home and the out-buildings!

The main thing we wanted to sort out was the wiring to the water pump in the well. The call-out on New Years Eve confirmed it was the power supply that failed and not the pump. We have therefore had an extension lead through the letter box and across the lawn ever since that started tripping out the new fuse box last week during the heavy rain.

It was agreed at the time that a new cable would be a good idea and I duly excavated a 15m long trench through rock to lay a duct for the cable. This took me two weekends of hard labour with a pickaxe. Just before Dave started to wire in the new cable, I asked him about an old switch next to the back door and we thought that it was probably redundant and could be removed. However, as it was live, Dave thought he had better trace it before cutting the cable. It was of course a switch that turned on the power to the two sockets in the well that powers the pump that I must have turned off when seeing what everything did when we moved in.

Dave also admitted that the lack of power to the conservatory that had had him stumped two weeks ago was because a switch on the skirting board in our bedroom had been turned off. Dave has promised to provide a wiring diagram when he has finished.

The moral of the story, however, is if in doubt leave it switched on!

At least I now have half the length of cable duct we need to run a proper cable to the outbuildings, however, that will undoubtedly be another saga.