Halogen Kitchen Down Lights

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Dave_G

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Hi there,

How easy or difficult is it to fit kitchen unit down lights? Or with the new electrical regulations - is it something that a DIY'er is banned from undertaking?

The reason I ask, is that I am about to refurb my own kitchen and I would like to instal about five lights under the cabinets.

Any advice?

Cheers,

David
 
Officially - yup - the Prescott Pillock Police say that you cannot do this yourself without paying through the nose for someone to sign a piece of paper.

But, hypothetically speaking, your biggest problem will be (a) getting power to them and (b) switching them on and off. I had a similar problem (started and finished before Jan2005, yer Honour).

Most of these lights (all of them?) are halogen low voltage jobbies. There is usually room behind the wall units to drop the cable down from the transformer (and with long enough low voltage cable) that you can put the transformer on top of the wall units and drop the low voltage wire down from there to your lights. If the cable isn't long enough then some lighting flex or whatever will suffice as you will only be increasing the cable run by a few feet...but if you can...thicker the better cable. Use chocolate blocks.

Now...where to get power from? if you are lucky, then you might have an extractor fan mounted near/between the wall units. There's your power..tap into that.


Now...Maplin do a snazzy remote mains on/off unit. These have some sort of remote control and a number of units that are controlled by it. Mine were small boxes with a 13A socket on the front and a 13A plug at the back. I dispensed with these and used chocolate blocks for the connections etc.

The rest is fairly straightforward....if it isn't then you should consider getting in sparky :wink:
 
I prefer to pick the power up from the lighting circuit and have a 2 gang switch so that you can turn them on/off as you enter/leave the room.

Jason
 
its all very easy, just remeber to drop a cable down behind the wall units wenn you put them up, cos afterwoods its a bit dificult

McLuma
 
Roger Sinden":qd5h7xa7 said:
I agree but if you don't have easy access to the lighting circuit and/or able to easily cut out/chase out for a new light switch then .......

You haven't mentioned the need to fuse this spur. Maybe Prescott did have a modicum of a point after all.
 
<Mod hat>Folks, can we steer ever-so slightly away from the political references, please. A stitch in time saves making work for the Mods and all that. Ta muchly. I know; fussy, fussy. Just humour me. :wink: </Mod hat>

Cheers, Alf
 
Alf":2ggal0n7 said:
<Mod hat>Folks, can we steer ever-so slightly away from the political references, please. A stitch in time saves making work for the Mods and all that. Ta muchly. I know; fussy, fussy. Just humour me. :wink: </Mod hat>

Cheers, Alf
=D>

Not at all fussy Alf. I actually made a post on this thread earlier deploring the comment in question, but I deleted it for fear of inflaming the situation.

Gill
 
You haven't mentioned the need to fuse this spur

If you take it off the lighting circuit it will not need a fused connection unit (not spur) as the circuit will be protected by a 6amp breaker/fuse at the CU. You don't have a FCU on all your LV ceiling lights.

I assume Roger was suggesting picking up the supply from the FCU that controls the extractor which is OK

Jason
 
Alf":3o8qm2fk said:
<Mod hat>Folks, can we steer ever-so slightly away from the political references, please. A stitch in time saves making work for the Mods and all that. Ta muchly. I know; fussy, fussy. Just humour me. :wink: </Mod hat>

Cheers, Alf

Of course, Alf.....duly chastened ... :oops: I promise to try very hard never to make castigating comments about our excellent Deputy Prime Minister in the future.

Roger
 
jasonB":1apb5iav said:
If you take it off the lighting circuit it will not need a fused connection unit (not spur) as the circuit will be protected by a 6amp breaker/fuse at the CU. You don't have a FCU on all your LV ceiling lights.

Of course not.

I assume Roger was suggesting picking up the supply from the FCU that controls the extractor which is OK

Yes, fair point which I missed, but it should have been made a bit more explicit though if we're teaching an absolute beginner to do electrics while scorning part p. Some more detail on the lv cable requirements would have been sensible too. It doesn't take long before a "bit of lighting flex" will be inadequate for lv current. Is using flex rather than cable in a thermally enclosed space within the regs at all?

I just don't think that someone asking this question can or ought to feel competent to start doing this work without reading up in a whole lot more detail. Irrespective of Part P (which I don't particularly agree with).

I think that fluorescents are much more suitable for counter lighting, much more even spread of light, less glare bouncing off the worktop, and less heat in your cupboards. Even if you don't make pastry, like Pete.
 
I think this post is getting a bit too off topic, there are plenty of electrical forums for this type of question to be asked.

I agree that the slimline fluorescents give a better spread of light but they need a light pelmet to hide them, a lot of the modern kitchens look better without and in some cases there is not enough room to get a light pelmet under the wall units, like thisand this that I have done in the past.

Jason
 
Well thanks for all advice! I have the following in the kitchen and close to the current kitchen units:

1 x light switch;
1 x cooker switch;
3 x double switchable 13 amp sockets;
1 x TV ariel point;
1 x phone point.

So which is the best to run the transformer from?

Cheers,

David
 
http://www.askthetrades.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl

http://www.diynot.com/forums/

http://www.screwfix.com/talk/index.jspa ... s&ts=09523

That way you should get at least three different answers :wink:

From your details, the TV and phone are obviously out of the question (unless your house is wired for CAT5 in which case with some alterations to the patch board these could be used for remote switching)

The Cooker switch is likely to be protected by a 30A breaker so will not offer protection to the lights.

The light switch on it's own is no good as you will need to pick up a live feed usually from the ceiling rose)

Which leaves the 3 DSO's on your ring, you could run a spur from one of these into a fused connection unit, from here run 1.5mm T&E to the transformers, connect to transformer with a 5amp junction box.

Jason
 
If you were seriously asking whether you can take the feed from a phone line or a TV point, I really think you should get an electrician in.
 
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