Our electrician has accidentally cut all the ceiling holes for som
halogen downlights about 6mm too big!
The lights now pass through the holes instead of just covering them.
Does anybody have a solution (other than repositioning the light somewhere else and filling the holes)?
It strikes me that this must have happened many times before, s perhaps somebody has invented some sort of hole reducer that you ca press into the hole or something...
Any ideas gratefully received
-- timfel
get the old bits of plasterboard and cut the centers out smaller, and stick them back in a bit below the surface with bonding plaster..or just about anything..then reskim, repaint and mount the lights up.
Or use a scrap piece of plasterboard to make new holes as above.
Swap your lights for bigger ones?
What size hole has been cut?
Adam
Sack the electrician :-)
well you should do that on a regular basis anyway.
You could ask him how he fixed it last time he did that ;-)
Cut a section of plasterboard a few inches around the screwup and replace?
Cut a section of plasterboard back as far as the nearest ceiling joists and replace?
Tell the electrician to sort it out himself / find someone to sort it out?
You can get reducers from lighting shops that adapt larger holes for oldstyle R63 spots to the smaller ones needed for halogens.
Alternatively, get some adjustable downlights - they tend to be a few mm bigger than fixed ones.
AThus spake timfel ( snipped-for-privacy@diybanter.com) unto the assembled multitudes:
I don't see why it should be your problem to fix. It's the electrician's incompetence that has caused this, so he should either fix it himself or you should get someone else in to repair or replace the ceiling and charge/sue the electrician for the cost of the work. You have the right to do this, after all.
Maybe *he's* the electrician; so that this is a bit like the guy who goes to the doctor and says that he has a "friend with a discharge".
Well, if his "friend" has a discharge he'll probably have one too after the incubation period, so he might as well see the doc anyway.
Owain
Or perhaps its a friend. Or perhaps hes paying the spark per hour on the understanding that any issues are his problem.
What I did with some ragged holes was apply filler, get it level & smooth. Filler is weaker than PB though, so its worth applying it deeper than the PB.
NT
I gather that downlights are held up by clips that grab on to the plasterboard. In which case to avoid the light falling down I'd make the scrap pieces of plasterboard an inch bigger than the hole and put them above the hole through a couple of slots on each side of the hole. Then plaster the whole lot flat. But will the clips tolerate two thicknesses of plasterboard?
One day the fashion for downlights will change and everyone will be ripping them out. That is unless they cause a fire that buns the house down before fashions change.
no that's not likely to work because it'd be to thick, the only way really to do it is to cut back the plasterboard to the nearest joists each side and fix a patch in place and patch the plaster skim if skimmed. I'd fix battens to the unsupported edges as well of the hole and (screw up through existing plasterboard) then fix the patch to that as well.
I did this when I cut 9one) hole to big. It was fine, though I expect in time that a crack will probably appear at the join between old and new
but as others have said, this is the Electricians problem to sort out
Perfect response, hats off to you for that one lol
Please be aware that the home owners club interface is crap and thus us here on the main part of usenet have no idea what they said. Brian--
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