How NOT to install Downlights.

[00:00:02]When I did check, wouldn't I?

[00:00:04]So, we're at my house today and this is my whole home renovation project going on. In this video, I'm going to be fitting downlights into [music] this bedroom. Trainees, you may learn a thing or two. If you're not a trainee, I taught you none of this.

[00:00:22]>> [music] >> Oh, dust in the eye. So, in this ceiling, we have a plasterboard ceiling with plaster finish. Behind that, there are timber joists. These timber joists are supporting the whole ceiling. So, it's important that when we're doing our measurements, we need to make sure that our holes holes that we cut up into the ceiling for the downlights are not going to be where the supporting beams are cuz that is a big no-no and that is electrician's disaster, quite honestly.

[00:00:50]I've just pulled this bit here away that was was falling away. Look, I've got a nail in the ceiling there. That is key information cuz do you know what that is? Cuz that now represents a nail that's gone up through the plasterboard and it's gone straight up into the the uh joist into the wooden into the wooden beam behind it. That means that I know that one of these beams is right here.

[00:01:11]That's really important to know.

[00:01:14]When I tap where the timber is, it sounds more solid.

[00:01:18]As I tap away, it becomes more sound You can tell there's nothing behind it. These are old-school methods, by the way, guys.

[00:01:24]You can get joist checkers and things like that. I don't trust them. I haven't got on well with them. I'm very old-school in certain with certain methods. It's always worked for me. I've been doing this 25 years. It's never let me down.

[00:01:38]There we go. There he is. There's our joist right there.

[00:01:41]Another top tip, wherever you see cracks, it can be a really good indication as to where the timber joists are. The reason I say that is because if you see a perfectly straight crack and you know it's a plasterboard ceiling, then you know that's probably going to be the where the plasterboards meet together.

[00:01:57]It's always going to be on a joist. At least it should be if it's been done the right way.

[00:02:03]Voilà. Here we have our timbers.

[00:02:05]And you can see here, it's lovely and clear right the way through. So, we are all good. I've identified where all these timbers are in the ceiling, [snorts] so I know that I can position my downlights right in between them without any problems. I think it's time to get down. It's pretty hot up here.

[00:02:20]And we've got bees up here as well. Some of this you just need to think to yourself, right, where would I like my first downlight to start? Do I want Do I want my first downlight to be quite close to the edge of the wall? For me, that's my decision to make cuz it's my house and I'm an electrician.

[00:02:35]Crude as So, that's 730 mil there.

[00:02:38]Yeah, 730 mil works perfectly this end as well. Now I've got my end point now and my end point here, how many downlights do I want to put in between to make up the line? That's the next question, right.

[00:02:50]>> [snorts] >> I put my screw in dead center to where the downlight's going to be.

[00:02:54]All the way go. Don't fall off. Don't fall off. Come on. That's basically This is just too easy today. Too easy.

[00:03:03]It's exactly pretty much 4 m there. I say exactly pretty much because with these patterns that you're doing on the ceiling, [music] if you're out by 10, 20, 30, 40 mil, it's not the end of the world. No one's going to look at that and go 12 mil out that one.

[00:03:20]6 mil out that one. After confirming the first and last downlight positions, I can then measure the distance between these two lights. [music] I then decide roughly how many lights I would like to infill between the gaps.

[00:03:31]Once the number of lights has been decided, I then take the measurement between the first and the last light and then divide it by how many spacings there are between the infill lights.

[00:03:40]Right, so I've got my calculations of where I want these downlights exactly.

[00:03:43]What I'm going to do now is just measure about and make sure we're not going to be hitting any joists anywhere. So, one here.

[00:03:52]There's our joist line there. That's That's pretty close. Pretty close, but we'll go with it for a minute. We got one here.

[00:04:00]1 m here.

[00:04:03]And then last one comes out That should come out to our original position here, which is there.

[00:04:10]So, that is pretty much spot on. Yeah, spot on.

[00:04:16]I've marked out my row of downlights to follow. [music] I want to determine how far off the wall the lights will be.

[00:04:21]Every scenario is different, [music] but in this scenario, it's a case of what looks right. I do the same measurement at both ends of the row. I've got a measurement of 730 mm by 800. [music] Now, take a look at this. So, this is my trusty chalk line.

[00:04:35]For some of you, I know what you're thinking. Leon, they've got lasers for this. What are you doing? Here's the thing. I am not the type of person to just jump ship on on using a certain method if I'm happy with it. I've always been happy using this method. It's never let me down. It's never run out batteries, although it has run out of chalk, to be fair.

[00:04:53]There's something so manual about this which I I love. I've always used this method for over the last 25 years, ever since I started my apprenticeship. Here we go. We pull it from one end to the other. I pull this nice and tight.

[00:05:04]Are you ready? On 3 2 1, 3 2 1. Boom!

[00:05:09]Just like that, we have ourselves a lovely powdered chalk line. I know that end spotlight is 730 mil off of that wall. What I need to do is come to this end now. 730 mil again.

[00:05:20]Nice and easy.

[00:05:22]Straight to there.

[00:05:24]3 2 1. Boosh! There we go. Keeping it old school and soulful.

[00:05:29]730 mil from wall.

[00:05:31]Boosh! Like that. So, I know that that light in the corner there [music] is 800 mil from that wall. So, I'm going to make this light 800 mil from this wall.

[00:05:41]What I need to now >> [music] >> do is do this, but just over there to complete the pattern.

[00:05:50]I can use [music] a drill and just drill up the light centers and then drill up to the sides. What that basically does is just make sure that there's definitely nothing around it.

[00:05:59]Um or I could go up into the loft nine times and make sure that there's nothing around every single time I knock up for each one, but I'm feeling too lazy and too hot for that.

[00:06:12]Ooh, it's just just up the side of it is. So, what I'm going to do here Okay, that's the edge of the joist there. So, I'm just going to shifty this one over 13 mil, something like that.

[00:06:23]Got plenty of room between that joist and that joist there. I've measured I can see there's nothing around it. So, I'm going to move this one around about 15 mil. Be very, very cautious when you're doing your hole drilling cuz you get it wrong, you've destroyed your customer's ceiling or you've just caused yourself extra time on the job you didn't need to be messing around with patching up holes. So, yeah, be very careful before you drill. You only get one chance. As the age-old saying goes, you measure twice and then you cut once.

[00:06:55]Make sure you're holding the drill nice and firm.

[00:06:58]No rushing. Put it down nice. Look at this. There we go.

[00:07:01]It's torn a little bit of the cardboard off the the back of the plasterboard, but we're all good. There we go. There's our first one out. So, to this bad boy, I will leave a link in the description below.

[00:07:15]I have one I didn't check, wouldn't I?

[00:07:19]Oh, for flip. Oh.

[00:07:22]Come on now. Just quickly, guys, these videos take a lot to produce.

[00:07:26]Suckitandsee have sponsored this video.

[00:07:28]I've been using their equipment for decades. It's good quality equipment and it's sensibly priced. If you want to know more, links in the description.

[00:07:35]Back to the video.

[00:07:36]What I'm going to do is I'll just move this across a little bit [music] and I'll just put a little bit of filler plasterboard in there and screw it in.

[00:07:42]When it gets skimmed, shh, nobody knows.

[00:07:48]>> [music] >> the best cable in the [music] country.

[00:07:55]Yes, thank you Doncaster for this beautiful cable that you blessed us with, as always. What I'm going to do is wire from the consumer unit, I'm going to wire directly to the switch, like so.

[00:08:06]And then out of the switch, I'm then going to wire to the first spotlight, which I then just daisy chain to the next, [music] to the next, like so. So, I'm wiring back to the consumer unit because this is a rewire at my property, [music] but typically in most households, the wiring will already be there to be added to. Depending on the property would depend, really, [music] how it's been wired. So, for this, I've wired mains to switch. Some properties will be mains to lights. Uh currently, we don't have any power here. Usually, if you're converting a central light to spotlights, then you're already going to have a power supply there. So, it's all done by a case-by-case scenario. So, obviously, we need to get above where we're working to be able to get the wires around. Obviously, if this was in like a uh uh ground-floor lounge, in that ceiling, then we'd simply step up onto the first floor of that, and we'd be working in the, you know, the floor below. But, as we're on the second floor, we're going up into the loft.

[00:09:00]Right, here we go. Nice and simple now, we daisy chain from the first light fitting here to the next, to the next, to the next, right the way around to the very end. Oh, look at this.

[00:09:08]This makes me sad. Look at this. These timbers are thin enough already. These timbers are only designed to be able to take the weight of the ceiling. So, last thing you want to do is be drilling holes actually through these timbers. I know you do it in the floors down below, but they're actually structurally designed to be able to take a lot of weight. These are not so much in the loft, so it's not nice to see, and it's certainly [snorts] something that you don't do when you're in the loft. You don't drill these timbers.

[00:09:34]Let's get these old cables out.

[00:09:36]This loft is so hot. My cameraman has bailed on me and is now filming from underneath the ceiling [music] and I got to be honest, I don't blame him. Oh my goodness.

[00:09:45]Woo, I'm glad I'm out from there.

[00:09:48]It's hot. That makes it worthwhile seeing this.

[00:09:51]Thank goodness. So, what we got here? We have our live, neutral, and earth that come from the consumer unit, comes up to this light switch here. From here, it then continues up this cable, it goes up into the loft, which comes to this lighting position here. This is our first lighting position. So, this is the live, neutral, and earth coming in. It then continues and connects here to the next lights, to the next lights, obviously giving power to each one of these downlights as it goes. Goes all the way around to the very end of the circuit, where this is the final one in the daisy chain. So, it's as simple as that. Live, neutral Live, neutral, and earth at every spotlight. Downlights used to be, well, back when I was an apprentice, 50 W per piece. So, if you had 10 downlights in a room, that's 500 W. Now, imagine if you got 20 lights in the ground floor of a building, that's a kilowatt of power just on lighting, which is insane compared to nowadays, where looking at switchable loads between 5 to 7 W. So, what we've got is a brown, green, blue, blue, green, brown. What that basically means is, you can see behind it, live, earth, neutral, neutral, earth, live.

[00:10:55][music] So, these two lives connect together, these two neutrals connect together, and the two earths connect together. So, quite simply, you can't really go wrong with this. It's a simple case of if you strip this back and you connect [music] each conductor in the right color. That easy.

[00:11:11]>> [music] >> So, I always make sure I give it a little little tug just to make sure that every single conductor is in as it should do. Nice and simply, I can snap it shut like so.

[00:11:23]Guess what?

[00:11:24]That is our first lighting connection done.

[00:11:29]Now, it's just another eight to go.

[00:11:34]It's gone well and it's now time for me to repair my hash-up. [music] There's nothing good about the situation apart from the fact that I get to show you what to do in case this ever happens to you. You know, it'd be really funny cuz there's me saying, "No, you won't notice the if there's a small gap and then a slightly bigger gap at the next one."

[00:11:50]I'll probably be laying in bed, probably look at it every night going, "I see that gap."

[00:11:55]I told the entire nation and the whole world that you wouldn't notice it and I noticed it.

[00:12:00]Hopefully that's not the case.

[00:12:04]Not the most satisfying moment. See that?

[00:12:08]Yeah, that is going to require a bit of filling.

[00:12:11]But if I can just get a screw into that, that will hold it in position so I can get some filler in there.

[00:12:19]Little bit more like that. There.

[00:12:21]Right.

[00:12:22]Doesn't look pretty right now, admittedly, but once that's had some filler put in there, I can see that that's going to be fine.

[00:12:31]And I'll make sure my wing clips obviously go this way.

[00:12:38]So, we've got our wing clips here. These wing clips, as you push into the ceiling, they simply go up like that. And as the as they go in, they they push up against themselves and basically pulls the light fitting up into the ceiling. You just go in like this, click one in, push up into the ceiling like so, wing clip wing springs back and then push up.

[00:13:01]In you go.

[00:13:10]There we go. That's it. The marathon is over. It's done.

[00:13:14]There we have it. There's our full set of lights.

[00:13:18]One thing left to do.

[00:13:21]So, the install part of this job is now complete. What's really important as electricians and what sets us aside from anybody else is the fact that we do our testing before we switch and energize the system. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do an insulation resistance. I'm going to check the paths between the earth to live, earth to neutral, live to neutral to make sure that there's no dead shorts or low readings of of uh between the cabling.

[00:13:43]So, simply here, I've put 250 V of DC current straight between earth to live, earth to neutral, and I can see that I've got over 200 megaohms, which tells me that the circuit is completely clear, which is exactly what I want. But, what I now need to do is I've tested to make sure that there's nothing shorting out or close to that. I now need to make sure that there's nothing that's open circuit that shouldn't be. And what I mean by that is making sure that the earth path is continuous from here going up to the lighting circuit at the end there. I need to make sure that that path is continuous all the way through.

[00:14:16]This earth cable here connects straight down to the earth down at the consumer unit, which is connecting to the earth of this lighting circuit here. So, effectively, from this light fitting here, which is the last on line, there should be a continuous loop going right the way around back to here.

[00:14:33]Because, think of it this way. This is connected down to the earth down at the consumer unit. The From the consumer unit, the lighting circuit earth then connects through the circuit and comes to this point up to here. We have a live, neutral, and an earth up to this point.

[00:14:49]So, by me now putting my test meter straight across from here across to here, I'm effectively making my meter part of a giant loop, and I'm going to read the resistance of that loop. I've already nulled the meter to take into consideration there is about 50 m of cable on here, so there will be a resistance on that, quite a big resistance. So, I've already nulled the leads with that connected.

[00:15:13]So, it's not going to be taking a reading of that whole wire. It's taking a a reading of literally from here back to the consumer unit.

[00:15:24]Oh, when I get one off of one of these wing clips where it's connected onto the metal body, let's try again. Hey, there we go.

[00:15:31]1.03 ohms. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So, that's just I'm sure it'd be slightly lower than that as well. 0.99 as I push more pressure on, the reading's coming down. I'm happy with that. That's telling me Yeah, 0.95. It's coming down. Yeah, that's telling me that I've got a good earth path.

[00:15:48]I've now proven that in the event of a fault the fault current has somewhere to flow down and that's the earth. That's where you want it to go down. I've just proven [music] that the earth path actually continues right the way down to the mains cuz down there, that's where your circuit breaker is going to trip for safety. Three, two, one.

[00:16:08]>> [music] >> Please tell me the lights came on.

[00:16:19]Yeah. Here we go. I'm glad I've done this now. I was really, really trying my hardest to convince my wife to just just have a central light. We don't have the time or the money for this.

[00:16:30]But I've got to say wow, yeah. This I'm glad I've done it now. This is it. This is the one.