single gang wall box spacer needed

On 22 Oct 2005 05:42:20 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com scrawled:

They do what? I think you're making this up.

If the the box isn't deep enough then you either a) have stuffed too many wires behind it or b) have made a pigs ear out of connecting the correct amount of wires.

I fink he means a pattress box?

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

Nothing to do with sinking the back box deep enough then?

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

I'm pretty certain MK still list them. Look up their cat. at a wholesaler.

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 13:47:07 GMT, "The3rd Earl Of Derby" scrawled:

No.

Wood-effect ones, for mounting behind switches for decorative effect, in the "blister packed fancy lightswitches" department at Buy & Queue, may be what you want.

Owain

I could not find them in the MK cat but I'll give them a call to check. Plan B is to purchase the thinest possible surface box and cut out the inside and hope I can feed the screws all the way through to make a spacer.

Thanks

That's one alternative. You'll need to remove the brass screw inserts and drill all the way through. Good luck - those boxes are so easily broken.

MK2134WHI

Job Done!

I once ground out the innards of a blanking plate with a Dremel to increase the depth of a surface box (temporarily!), to accomodate a dimmer switch.

Thanks for the ideas and the reference number

Cheers

As well as the MK item described in other replies, MK also include a shim about 3mm deep with some of their dimmer switches. Not sure if this is deep enough to allow the dimmer to be used on a plaster depth box (it looks to slim to me, but can't imagine why else it would be needed) or if they can be obtained independently. I should have a couple hanging around, drop me a note if you think they might work for you and I'll send them over gratis (subject to finding them, and with the caveat that they're probably curver to suit MK Logic items).

Depending on what you're trying to achieve, there are items that have deeper sides than normal so the functionality they provide can be retro fitted to a shallow box. A few that come to mind are dimmer switches and Euromod frames (for fitting networking components that prefer a 35mm box to a 25mm one), and low profile converter sockets that fit over a single gang box to provide two sockets.

HTH IanC

The boxes come in different depths. It is quite possible to have one that isn't deep enough for the accessory, although I suspect it is quite rare. Trying to replace a light switch with an FCU, for example, where you might replace the "outside" light switch with an RCD FCU.

Christian.