Hi folks,
I've just bought a B&Q Vortex spiral arm ceiling light and I'm a bit concerned at the way you're meant to install it.
This has five arms for the lights, and you need to bolt these to the central mount yourself, and them wire them up to the included terminal block.
What concerns me is that the instructions tell you to twist five stranded wires together, and them stick them in the terminal block and tighten it down.
Once you twist these wires together, they just about fill the junction block, and you can just barely get them in without the twist coming apart. You don't have a lot of depth, so there's maybe 6-7mm of wire at most going into the block, which isn't a lot when you're trying to clamp down on all five of these stranded wires.
Then once you've got the live set installed, you have to do the same with the neutrals, which means the live set bend and twist as you try to manoeuvre all the wires into place. Throughout the process I had loose strands shearing off both the live and neutral side, and I've had to tip a whole pile of metal strands out of the light fitting.
Then to cap it all, it's an extremely tight fit to the ceiling, so you have to twist the wires and really push hard to get them into position as you offer it up to the mount.
It really doesn't feel safe to me, I'm not at all sure a terminal block can safely hold that many twisted wires, especially with the forces on them during the installation. And you've no way of seeing if there are any loose strands, or broken strands inside there after the install.
I'm no expert in electrics, could I get a second opinion here on whether that sounds like a problem?
I've just bought a B&Q Vortex spiral arm ceiling light and I'm a bit concerned at the way you're meant to install it.
This has five arms for the lights, and you need to bolt these to the central mount yourself, and them wire them up to the included terminal block.
What concerns me is that the instructions tell you to twist five stranded wires together, and them stick them in the terminal block and tighten it down.
Once you twist these wires together, they just about fill the junction block, and you can just barely get them in without the twist coming apart. You don't have a lot of depth, so there's maybe 6-7mm of wire at most going into the block, which isn't a lot when you're trying to clamp down on all five of these stranded wires.
Then once you've got the live set installed, you have to do the same with the neutrals, which means the live set bend and twist as you try to manoeuvre all the wires into place. Throughout the process I had loose strands shearing off both the live and neutral side, and I've had to tip a whole pile of metal strands out of the light fitting.
Then to cap it all, it's an extremely tight fit to the ceiling, so you have to twist the wires and really push hard to get them into position as you offer it up to the mount.
It really doesn't feel safe to me, I'm not at all sure a terminal block can safely hold that many twisted wires, especially with the forces on them during the installation. And you've no way of seeing if there are any loose strands, or broken strands inside there after the install.
I'm no expert in electrics, could I get a second opinion here on whether that sounds like a problem?