I would like to fit soffit down lighters at the front of my house. Only 4 of them, but Ive had a quote for £320. I thought this was a bit over the top so would like to tackle it myself. I currently have a porch light in the soffit above my front door. Can I just take the wiring from that, & then is it just a case of linking the 4 lights together? i.e. the main wiring to the first light, then each one linked thereafter? Thanks
Wiring soffit down lighters
- Thread starter scottpetrie
- Start date
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Yes, essentially that is all that would be required, provided that you're happy for the porch light and down lighters all to come on together (controlled by the existing porch light switch). Will the down lighters be in fairly close proximity to the current siffit porch light?
Kind Regards, John
Well I was either going to replace the porch light with an up to date one as its pretty old, or just remove it all together. Yes they will be along the same straight of soffit, approx 15M with the current porch light above front door which is in the middle.
Fair enough - that sounds straightforward enough. If you decided to do away with the existing porch light, you could just move the cable currently feeding it to one of the new down lights, and then on from there to each of the other three, in turn.
Kind Regards, John
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Why would you think that? It sounds an inherently fair price - perhaps even cheap.
Okay. As for materials, am I just looking at 4 downlighters and a reel of flex?
Used Led deck lights in my soffit, 9 along a 5m run, at around 10watts I don’t worry if I forget to turn them off.
Well where to start, electrician has overheads,
van costs,
fuel,
MOT,
insurances,
test equipment to pay for/maintain calibrate
sundries screws clips
keeping up to date with qualifications
purchasing new regulations books documentations
all above and more have to be taken into account on every job
thats all before materials and time spent.
Sounds like a reasonable cost to me. He's probably allowed half a day plus materials.
Not unreasonable but also understandable you want to do it yourself
Not unreasonable but also understandable you want to do it yourself
Yeh not long moved in and want to do as much stuff in the house as I can myself
Very true, but one obviously does not expect to recover a whole year's overheads from each and every customer
If one works on, say, just 200 days per year, one would have to recover 0.5% of one's annual overheads for each day of work. If (I would think being pretty generous) one estimated £10,000 of overheads per year, one would therefore have to recover that from customers at the rate of £50 per day - so £50 for a 1-day job, £25 for a quick half-day one etc.
Kind Regards, John
Very true, but one obviously does not expect to recover a whole year's overheads from each and every customer
If one works on, say, just 200 days per year, one would have to recover 0.5% of one's annual overheads for each day of work. If (I would think being pretty generous) one estimated £10,000 of overheads per year, one would therefore have to recover that from customers at the rate of £50 per day - so £50 for a 1-day job, £25 for a quick half-day one etc.
Kind Regards, John
Agree with that totally and not saying you should recover the full costs but just emphasising that its not just a case of 4 downlighter and a bit of cable.
Indeed, and I agree that's something which is often overlooked. However, that £50 per day (for £10,000 pa overheads) should be built into one's quoted hourly rate - so say about £6 per hour (for £10,000) on top of what gross hourly rate one wants to receive.
How long would you expect to take to install 4 soffit down lights and connect them to a nearby (already switched) supply?
Kind Regards, John
Maybe you don't, but I bet the neighbours get sick of looking at them.
Are we to assume that this:
means it's a bungalow?
If not it could take quite a lot of up/down/move ladder/repeat to install the lights and fish cable.
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