Earlier in the week, my daughter Monique rang: "Hey dad, can you come and fit a couple of lights for me?" now I should point out she's been married for just under a year, and they have lived in the house for coming up to three years now. "How come I'm doing it? You have a husband now!" I said, bribed with the offer of copious amounts of tea and cake. I gave in and arranged to go over to her house Saturday.
We have an outlet in the UK called Dunelm they're basically a home furnishings outlet, but the one thing I've discovered about them is they like the supermarket like to change things. You know how you can go into the supermarket each week and go straight to the Marmite and then suddenly, one Saturday, they've moved the Marmite to another aisle? Well, Dunelm likes to do something similar with their products. For example, recently, the missus wanted to change the blinds, not that there was anything wrong with the old ones, of course. So I had the famous: ""It'll only take a few minutes to swap them out." yeah right. Dunelm likes to change the fittings, doesn't it. And as for widths, it likes to now and again mess with that too!
The other thing they like to do is make their light fittings totally incompatible with what you currently have up. Most homes probably have those screw-on plastic light fittings, which are fine, but then you have the large chocolate-block fitting screwed to the ceiling which takes up most of the volume of the screw cap you took down. Now, most people don't want to take that block down, mainly because we're not electricians. Hence, we slip the supplied metal bracket behind the chocolate block and then try to force all the wiring from the new light fitting into the low-profile enclosure Dunelm so loves to promote not forgetting, in this case, the three arms with nuts on bolted to the inside of the housing.Obviously, the first step is to turn off the electricity for the lights in the fuse box. Then, after removing the old light, I forced the new one up after a bit of modification, climbed down the steps and switched the power back on BANG! a blue stream shot across the ceiling with a puff of black smoke. Not only had it blown a bit of plastic off the chocolate block, but it also blew up the light switch! "Oh dear, the light switch is knackered; it won't turn off or on," I said. Clearly, one of the arms of the lights was touching something live! I dispatched the son-in-law to the local DIY store (B&Q) to buy a new light switch while I reseated the light, and while I was waiting for the SIL to return, I fitted the upstairs one and switched the power back on, and at least it didn't go bang again. ""There's something wrong? I said "I don't understand? I wired it up the same?" The two light switches were set to off and on? Off for downstairs and On for upstairs. I looked at the wiring, scratched my head. I went on the Internet, scratched my head. I went back to the light switch, scratched my head, then my daughter said: "Oh, hang on, dad, let me switch the light off upstairs. Hey, Presto, both switches for downstairs were now Off!
If you are going to change your lights. Make sure the light rose is deep enough.
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