Electrical looping is loop/loops created between two light with 1 single wire connected to multiple fittings. Usually looping is done for neutral wire. Neutral wire is a return wire for the current in an electrical circuit. That is it carries electricity from the output device back to the service panel/board.
As neutral wire carries charge while returning, it doesn’t get heated up much. Also I t becomes necessary to loop neutral wire is it is difficult to pull neutral wire for longer distances and have separate neutral wire for each and every light/fan connection.
Let me give you an example to help you understand it better. Suppose you have 10 lights in your living room, the neutral wire gets looped between these 10 lights internally and you have 1 neutral wire finally get connected to the main switch point to complete the circuit. And this is how and why you have 1 single circuit for 10 lights and in-turn 1 switch that controls these lights. This loping of wire done inside the house is called as internal looping.
Few advantages of having internal looping are-
- Labor work for doing wiring for every single point is reduced, therefore saving on your material and labor expense.
- Where ever loping needs to be done, thicker wire is used. And thicker the wire, more durable it is.
- If internal looping wouldn’t be done, the number of wires and color coding would increase, thus causing lot of confusing for connecting the wires.
External Looping
Looping of wires done outside home i.e. from your MCB box with neighbors MCB box, then its cheating. Do not do this, but I’ll explain you how it is done so that you don’t get cheated by this trick.
For external looping the neutral phase of house 1 is connected to neutral phase of its neighbor house. Now what happens is that house 1 will receive its electricity bill much lower than it used to, while the neighboring house will receive bill much higher than what he actually uses. To avoid getting into troubles and paying more than required, do not try external looping and save yourself from this trick.
In a room if 10 lights are operated with a single switch, then can it be charged as 10 light points or one light point? Please clarify?
this is complex situation. if lights are far apart then these are 10 individual points, but electrician should charge bit less as there are no individual switchboard/switches used. Hence isnt single point neither these are 10 separate points. something in between. depending upon material and labour requirement your electrician will tell you cost. Also not a good idea to have single switch operating 10 lights. very bad design. THe savings on electric wire will cost you more on electricity bills in long run.
Thanks for explaining me this loop. Can we get two switch for two different tubelights in loop?
Yes, but let experienced electrician take the decision.
Can the neighbours operate our switches if it is looped in our mobile box?
Hi Sir, thank you for y Yu our write up.
1 question, can you show a simple drawing on this neutral wire looping? Cos I saw my contractor did it by looping the Live wire for some of my lightings. Thank you 🙏
Neutral looping sytem in any sub-circuit of elecrical wiring is notdvisable at all.As per National Electric code ad also safety of electrical installation ofbuilding,neutral looping system must be avoided.Every circuit of light/fan etc must be completed by a phase and eutral at the switch board
Normally neutral looping is suggested b the electrician to reduce his work and states that wiring quantity also reduced.As a result, building owner saisfies but, in long run it effects on entire wiring system and electrical gadgets damages and leads to incresed power bills.