Under counter lighting question

leevis · 30 Nov 2020

Hi
I'm in the process of getting a fitted kitchen and wife has now decided that she wants that under counter lighting. Fair enough.

Now, the issue i have is i am trying to plan the electrics and there will be FOUR strips of these lights, one under counter on left, one under counter on right (5m apart) and on the front bottom of the island and the back bottom of the island.

I have seen that each strip (there will be four) has its own starter and this has an on-off switch, what wife would like would be one wall mounted switch which would control all of these four parts.

The only way that i can see this work would be to tee off the lighting circuit and connect each of the four starters together and then back to a switch and then turn them all to ON and should work

Is this the right way to do this?

RF Lighting · 30 Nov 2020

Normally you would take your switched live and neutral from the switch position or wherever needs be according to your specific existing wiring setup and run it to the top of cabinet number one, then run a cable from there to cabinet number two and so on, and then install a junction box or socket etc what ever you require on top of the cabinet to supply your starter (led driver??) and drop the output wires down the back of the cabinet to the actual lights.

SUNRAY · 1 Dec 2020

Are you referring to plinth lighting to light the floor, or
Down lighting under worktop to light the front of cabinet doors, or
Under wall unit lighting to light the work space?

Do you have a cable route to the island?

leevis · 1 Dec 2020

There is nothing there yet. Just trying to figure out what is going where before i start putting the floor in.
These are 2 x LED strips that will be the under worktop lighting under cabinet doors on the left side and right side 6m apart
Also yes 2x Under Plinth lighting
Yes there will be a route that i can connect all for of these together, just need to understand if this is possible or not.
What i was thinking was to run a 1.5mm from the right side, to the island underfloor, and then from there to the left side and leave it at that. That should give me what i need in order to put the floor down.
Quite how to connect this to a switch is another issue

Tigercubrider · 1 Dec 2020

Do you have solid floors or concrete?

leevis · 1 Dec 2020

Its a floating floor, concrete base, 52mm joists on top with 18mm Chip board on top of that.

I am looking at buying some conduit to put all of the cables through and thinking about building in some redundancy to this.

SUNRAY · 1 Dec 2020

leevis said:
Its a floating floor, concrete base, 52mm joists on top with 18mm Chip board on top of that.

I am looking at buying some conduit to put all of the cables through and thinking about building in some redundancy to this.

I always advocate plenty of access like conduit to the island to allow for future faults/alterations.
I'd suggest going for a bigger size like 32mm if it easily fits in the space.

leevis · 1 Dec 2020

i think i am going to go for 50mm, that should cover all the bases

SUNRAY · 1 Dec 2020

leevis said:
i think i am going to go for 50mm, that should cover all the bases

thats very tight in a 52mm void. A couple of 32mm possibly.

leevis · 2 Dec 2020

Good shout, going to pick up some 32mm this afternoon

Question though, as this is going to be an island, there will be 3 runs of ducting

1. From Right Wall to island
2. From Back Wall to island
3. From Left Wall to island

I dont suppose its really worth doing anything other than making sure that each run is labelled (where it comes from) and terminates upwards, would it be easier to cut three holes in the chipboard flooring (18mm) with each one of these poking out or one big one? Doubt it you can buy a three into one adapter

It'll be under the island anyway

winston1 · 2 Dec 2020

[QUOTE="leevis, post: 4799350, member: 53765]
What i was thinking was to run a 1.5mm from the right side, to the island underfloor, and then from there to the left side and leave it at that. That should give me what i need in order to put the floor down.
[/QUOTE]
Use 1.0mm. Cheaper, easier to work with, and all that is required.

RF Lighting · 2 Dec 2020

winston1 said:
Use 1.0mm

Do you mean 1.0mm²? 1.0mm is not a cable size.

DetlefSchmitz · 2 Dec 2020

RF Lighting said:
Do you mean 1.0mm²? 1.0mm is not a cable size.

For all the effort he puts into correcting other people's 'errors', he just can't grasp this simple point.

leevis · 3 Dec 2020

OK so i now have the 32mm flexi duct, these will all terminate in just above the floor level

Next question is, how far up should they start. For example one of the cables will be a 10mm going from the consumer unit, down a wall, into the duct and then under the floor, do i start it 12 inches from the floor or go higher or lower?

leevis · 26 Jul 2021

Revisiting this one, all of this is mostly built now and kitchen has been installed. I was looking at the LED strips that i have, these have a transformer on the end which takes 240v and converts to 12v. Interestingly, the cable on the end of the transformer (the 240v end) has only two wires live and neutral ie no earth. What i want to do is remove this cable and connect it to a twin and earth cable but not too sure what to do with the earth that would be present?

Do i just put it in a single wago connector?

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Under counter lighting question

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