Someone who lived in this house prior to me was a keen DIYer (unfortunately). Over the years I've been fixing his 'workmanship' as various problems have surfaced. The latest issue concerns the external house lights he installed. There are 7 of them all told. He's taken the supply from a trip on the distribution board which also feeds the lights in the oldest part of the house - before various extensions were added. The exterior lights he installed were the PIR kind which sense whether it's dark or not and illuminate after dark if someone's nearby. Now as we all know (but he didn't) these devices don't last forever. And because he didn't bother installing any wall switches for these lights (relying simply on the after-dark+person nearby mechanism of each light) I now find myself having to use either new lights of the same type (which I *hate*) or normal 'on-only-when-switched-on' lamps which will be on all the time unless all the core house lights are switched off. I wish I could wring his bastard neck.
Great Wiring Job!
Jun 28, 2024
Last reply: 2 years ago
5 Replies
You may find that he may have used the grey twin and earth type mains cable on the exterior of the house. If so the insulation will have degraded with UV so check the insulation is not cracking up.
Without rewiring with individual light switches you should be able to find some with remote controls allowing manual on/off/pir operation.
You don't need 150 to 500W halogen capability from the past. You can probably meet your lighting requirements with something closer to 10W LED and on the cooler (blue) colour temperature.
Most of the LED floodlights come pre-wired with a short length of cable so also factor in some weatherproof junction boxes. Perhaps something like a Wiska box
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In message <v5muqc$3edh5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Cursitor Doom snipped-for-privacy@notformail.com writes
Could you not insert an on/off switch in the cable that feeds the outside lights, perhaps somewhere close to the distribution board?
Not perfect, but at least you could then turn off all seven outside lights while leaving the house lights on.
He did actually put a wall switch in for 2 of the 7, so that's some small consolation. However, I would imagine he's taken the feeds off to the ext. lights by breaking into the existing wiring close to where they're mounted, so no way of separating them at the DB, unfortunately. So as things stand, I've just put a tab of insulation tape over the bulb contacts of the 5 unswitched bulbs. I mainly replaced them for cosmetic reasons, so whilst functionality would have been nice, I can live without it for the sake of simplicity. One of the worst things he did was when he put this jacuzzi in. The earth wire disappeared around several corners, got kinked and pinched between some support framing, meandered off into the adjoining room and terminated in fresh air. He'd simply not connected it to anything at all. Wot a wanka.
These any use?
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could replace the PIR lamps with these and put the Quinetic switch anywhere - it doesn't need wiring.
Mike
I'll look into that suggestion (and the others) for which many thanks.
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