about 2m. Do you use reflectors on the indirect lights, or just allow the light to bounce around?
I'm now, after this thread, thinking of keeping the current centre-of-room cable, and fit some sort of directional multi-bulb fitting, as well as the top-of-cupboard lighting.
about four inches - I can just see the top of the extractor hood pipe. There is about another six inches of clearance above that.
Would you drill through the joists to carry the cable across or is there a neater/easier way in this instance?
"jkn" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
I think the problem with this is the same as the circular fitting - and I must say for lighting efficiency rather than ugliness, IMO a long tube is better, as it's a much more diffuse source - perhaps you could find a nice fitting and diffuser.
You will prolly be standing in your own light at the worksurfaces, unless you can craftily direct the individual lights to get round you
And you mentioned "de-luxe fluorescents" earlier. Have you thought about using the type of surface fluorescent fitting which incorporates mirrors and louvres - the sort of thing you can see here
formatting link
fourth item down the page: "Cat 2 Surface Mount Luminaire." These are very effective in reducing the glare associated with a naked flu' tubes. I'd go for an electronically ballasted one with triphosphor tube(s) though, rather then the switchstart thing shown.
you could, but a diffuse tube behind wood sheet is likely to give more even illumination. Also central sideways pointing reflectors are going to be murder on the eyes.
plenty of space for cfls. I wouldnt use linear fl there as the output per foot is too high.
you have to drill them, preferably at about the joist centre heightwise. The only type of lighting where you can avoid that is 12v lighting, with that you can use enamelled copper wire and just run it across the surface of the joists, holding it temporarily with tape and reboard straight onto it. But I wouldnt recommend 12v lighting at all.
I've never seen anything like that, expect the cords would tangle. The next best option, if youre not willing to add a wall switch and take each cable back to it, is to use fittings with switches on them, then you have some flexibility there.
Maybe if youre daring you could mount a row of 3 pullcords with different cord colours or something :)
What I did in my kitchen seems to work ok as well. The main switch controls the ceiling light, and the under cupboard ligating has its own pull switch mounted on the underside of the cupboard near the lights (placed toward the end and back of the cupboard so that it does not dangle where you want to work). That works quite well since it falls easily to hand when you are working on the surface and decide more light is required, but does not involve groping about under the cupboard looking for the rocker switch on the actual light fittings.
Reflectors would be good, but difficult to find. There used to be a scrap metal yard near me and they had loads of off-cuts from a lighting manufacturer with highly reflective aluminimum alloy plain and specular reflector sheets, but sadly they closed down. On one occation, I had a pile of mirror tiles I had taken off the wall, and I put those along the top of the cupboard in front of the lamp. It doesn't make a lot of difference. If you had a lot of space between the cupboard and ceiling, I might suggest using perimeter wall washers on their sides so they wash the ceiling instead (with light), but 10" isn't enough far enough away for a perimeter wall washer to reach far out along the ceiling -- you'll do better with a bare tube. (Perimeter wall washers are the lights you'll find in shops recessed in the ceiling about 2' in front of wall displays. You might not even think they are on, as they have virtually no light spill behind them because the reflectors accurately direct all the light towards the display wall.)
The trouble with that is that wherever you are working around the room, you will be working in your own shadow. That's why I say a central light in a kitchen is not functional (unless you have something directly below it to illuminate), but it might be decorative. Think about taking a second feed from the centre point to the other side of the room.
I would suggest you use your existing fluorescent fitting to experiment. If the fluorescent fitting is some 2 - 2½" wide (remove any diffuser so the bare tube is exposed), you could put it on top of the cupboard on its side with the tube facing the room, and it will be invisible. You could even bring it forward to half the cupboard depth and it should still be invisible in the room. This will also give you a good idea where dark areas may exist in the room. Expect the room to be darker than it was as I said earlier. You could improve this by using a 6' fitting (if it fits), but I think you'd do better to supplement with local under cupboard lighting and/or a light on the other side of the room as I suggested earlier. Also, a freshly painted ceiling will help a lot when it's been plastered.
Yes. Don't make the holes too big (a lighting cable will go through a 10 or 12mm hole), and position them roughly centrally between the top and bottom of the beam.
I would suggest you terminate the cable with a Klik S26 architrave socket on the wall just above the cupboard top. You can pick these up from a local electrical wholesaler, with a matching P22 plug, and use a short flex to connect it to the light on the cupboard.
Hi all Thanks for all your suggestions on this. I thought I'd give you an update. After going through all of this, and taking the current light fitting & pullswitch off in preaparation, it was determined by SWMBO that substantive changes were not going to be made ;-/. I can understand it actually, there's a lot of domestic upheaval at the moment and it might have been one straw too many.
So the plasterer is here to basically just reboard the ceiling and skim it. Somewhat disappointingly, in the course of this it's become apparent that drilling through one joist only would have been necessary to have run the extra cabling. The clincher was probably the seeming lack of double-cord pullswitches. If I'd wanted to change things in this area I'd have needed to start a bit earlier
So what I *will* do is see about getting a rather better fluorescent fitting to replace the current one. Maybe a 'luminaire' like Andy Wade suggested, or at least I'll investigate these triphospher tubes, electronic ballast etc.
A slight followup - are there benefits to having a two-tube fitting, I guess in terms of even light distribution etc?
So, thanks for all the advice - if I didn't take up much of it hopefully it will be of use to others.
to implement your plan later rather than now, all you need do now is run a not-connected-to-anything cable from the existing pull switch to your new location above the cupboards, drilling the one joist hole to route it, taping over the cable end in the switch box, and either poking it thru the PB above the cupboard, or marking with pencil exactly where it lies above the PB. For now it does nothing, but later you can add a 2nd pull switch next to the one there now, fit a light or socket at the other end, and connect both ends up. Its a simple thing to do and opens up the best of both worlds, a quick job now and the expansion option later.
electronic ballast gives no starting flash and better efficiency, recommended. Triphosphor tubes I'm not sure theyre so valuable, 3500K halophosphate are good quality for domestic use. Not all halophosphates are so good, theyre a variable lot, but 3500K is about as good as they get for domestic use.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.