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- 5 Aug 2004
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Hi - I am installing some downlights and looking to check a couple of things.
All the pre-packed kits that you can buy come with a length of cable of a specific length, giving a specific a regular length of cable between each downlight. I purchased a set of 5 from B&Q as an experiment and the cable (which was 0.75mm2) gave a max distance of 1.2m between each downlight. Just doing some rough calculations - by the time the cable have gone through joists etc. the distance I would want between most of mine will require about 1.8m of cable between each downlight.
My question is - if I were to buy the downlights and transformer and cable separately, could I safely use a run of say 1.8m of cable between each light if I were to use a higher rated cable (1.0 or 1.5mm2)??
I know that having very long cable runs would diminish the voltage and thus the brightness of the lamp and the length of cable should be the same from lamp to lamp, but other than maybe slightly less bright lamps, am missing any important implications here. (for reference I am looking to use 6x35W lamps with an appropriate transformer..
cheers
Phil
All the pre-packed kits that you can buy come with a length of cable of a specific length, giving a specific a regular length of cable between each downlight. I purchased a set of 5 from B&Q as an experiment and the cable (which was 0.75mm2) gave a max distance of 1.2m between each downlight. Just doing some rough calculations - by the time the cable have gone through joists etc. the distance I would want between most of mine will require about 1.8m of cable between each downlight.
My question is - if I were to buy the downlights and transformer and cable separately, could I safely use a run of say 1.8m of cable between each light if I were to use a higher rated cable (1.0 or 1.5mm2)??
I know that having very long cable runs would diminish the voltage and thus the brightness of the lamp and the length of cable should be the same from lamp to lamp, but other than maybe slightly less bright lamps, am missing any important implications here. (for reference I am looking to use 6x35W lamps with an appropriate transformer..
cheers
Phil
