Moira Niedzwiecka Posted May 17, 2018 Share Posted May 17, 2018 Just found the plaster wall lights I have been looking for at a great price. £30 instead of £141.00. I visited a passive house local to us that had them & they looked great, but were too expensive. Its feels good to get a bargain. NAXOS LED WALL WASHER £141.00 £30.00 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted May 17, 2018 Share Posted May 17, 2018 Electricians nightmare I cringe when given plaster lights to wire. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lizzie Posted May 17, 2018 Share Posted May 17, 2018 Well done @Moira Niedzwiecka 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dreadnaught Posted May 17, 2018 Share Posted May 17, 2018 30 minutes ago, ProDave said: Electricians nightmare Out of interest, why? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted May 17, 2018 Share Posted May 17, 2018 4 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said: Out of interest, why? They usually have no proper terminal boxes, leaving you to do really rubbish things like carve a hole in the plaster of the wall to allow you to drop some terminals in, and add to that most of them only have a very small area in contact with the wall leaving you not much room to devise and fit in said bodge. A triumph of appearance (if you like that sort of thing) over engineering. IF you know in advance this is the type of light to be used, then running the cable from the switch to the light in flex rather than twin and earth can avoid the need for terminals but still leaves you terminating the flex straight to the lamp holder with nowhere to lose the slack you need to do so. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToughButterCup Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 There's always one @Moira Niedzwiecka : tek na notice; 'ee's only jelus. Well done you for ferreting around and getting them for a decent price. Let the sparkies strut their stuff - they charge more than enough anyway. ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToughButterCup Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 11 hours ago, ProDave said: [...] IF you know in advance this is the type of light to be used, then running the cable from the switch to the light in flex rather than twin and earth can avoid the need for terminals but still leaves you terminating the flex straight to the lamp holder with nowhere to lose the slack you need to do so. Forewarned is fore-armed. How do you fit lights like this properly @ProDave? Specifically ....but still leaves you terminating the flex straight to the lamp holder with nowhere to lose the slack... How do you avoid that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 12 hours ago, ProDave said: Electricians nightmare I cringe when given plaster lights to wire. They are a pain. I found fixing them to the wall was more stressful than wiring them, though (we have plaster uplighters in four rooms, plus the hall and landing). I found that leaving an excess length of 1mm² T&E hanging out of a 20mm hole in the wall, and backing board behind the plasterboard, worked OK, as the excess cable could just be pushed back inside the wall/service area when fitting the light. Ours just had terminals on the lamp socket, and that was pretty easy to remove from the light, making wiring a lot easier. The only awkward bit with the wiring was refitting the lamp socket into the light with the cable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 I have plaster uplighters in 3 reception rooms. I don’t recall a whole lot of swearing going on when they were fitted, and there was A LOT of swearing, just not over those, so it seems they weren’t the worst thing to fit here if swearing is used as the benchmark. Hubby did manage to smash one whilst installing it mind that caused me to swear instead lol. He wanted them though so that probably improved his mood. If I had chosen them and he hadn’t been keen I imagine the swearing may have been off the scale. That was generally the case anyway, along with a running commentary on why what I had chosen was a bad idea ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToughButterCup Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 I'm thinking of having a swear box on site: to which I will, of course, contribute the most. It'll do to finance Friday Night Is Party Night in West Lancashire Off to swing a little more on the scaffolding - and contemplate uplighters. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 17 minutes ago, recoveringacademic said: I'm thinking of having a swear box on site I would have been bankrupt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dee J Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 Preferred option.... have a back box set in the wall right from the start. Allows for proper termination of the t&e to a short length of flex pre-connected to the lamp. If there isn't space for a full square box then the narrow architrave box or the continental round box will generally work. And redrilling the lamp to use the box screws can further neaten the installation. HTH Dee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moira Niedzwiecka Posted May 18, 2018 Author Share Posted May 18, 2018 Thanks for all the comments guys. I wasn't aware they were a pain to fit. We have not boarded or plastered yet. Walls have 50mm battens to provide a service cavity. Hopefully at this stage our electrician will figure out a workable way to fit. I hope so because I would like some different ones in other rooms. It was just a nice feeling to actually buy something decorative for the inside of the house rather than materials for building it. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 @Moira Niedzwiecka where did they come from..? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted May 18, 2018 Share Posted May 18, 2018 Are they Dana ones? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moira Niedzwiecka Posted May 18, 2018 Author Share Posted May 18, 2018 Blue Sun Tree is the website. The showroom & warehouse is about 30 mins away from us. They have some really nice stuff. I am going to collect the lights tomorrow & see if they have any bargains in the showroom. The make of the lights is Naxos. They are widely available on the net. Previously the cheapest I found was £85 each but mostly they are £140 ish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hazymat Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 (edited) This thread is exactly why the world needs architects. Don't get me wrong, I want to kill architects as much as the next person, but the difference with me is that I also want to kill sparkies who can't be arsed to do a job in a slightly different way to normal, and I want to kill carpenters and plasterers who don't want to fit backboxes behind light fittings. (NB I don't really want to kill anyone, this is turn of phrase.) My point is that, without an architect specifying something like this, we'd all be at the whim of the sparky who says "nah mate, you don't want to fit those, they are bad quality" when what they really mean is "nah mate, I don't like working with those because if it breaks, then I'll get the blame, and it takes 3 times longer than a normal fitting to install". And of course the logical conclusion is that we'd all end up with typical products that we see in all British houses - nothing aspirational, just stuff that the sparky preferred to fit. This is a self-build forum, right? We do things that normal tradesmen wouldn't do, right? Like fitting things that take longer, because we want them in our own home. Plaster lights are gorgeous, this is not something to be sneered at. Yes, they are more expensive. They break more easily. They need more forward planning, etc. etc. Case in point yesterday I fitted some 2 inch PVC waste pipe by Aquaflow. Not particularly high quality, but my god it's solid as hell. An absolute nightmare to work with, setting out the pipework was ok but taking it apart to glue it needed strap wrenches, vices, hammers, bleeding fingers, the whole damn lot. No plumber in their right mind would want to work with this stuff. But I did, because I wanted ridiculously strong, oversized waste pipe. Many pro plumbers would say you don't need 50mm... Sorry - a bit off topic there! Edited August 5, 2018 by hazymat 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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