home improvement
Sep. 14th, 2020 07:27 amApril 2017: as part of the kitchen renovation, we had a new rectangular 4800-lumen LED ceiling light fixture installed in the kitchen. It's lovely and bright and all good things that a ceiling light fixture should be.
Two or three weeks ago: the kitchen ceiling light fixture starts flickering irritatingly. I open the diffuser to see what's up, and find that one of the two rows of LEDs is just fine, while most of the other is alternating between full brightness and about 1/4 brightness at random time intervals (but in sync, all at once).
The fixture is basically a sheet of metal with about sixty LEDs attached to the surface somehow, and two rectangular boxes about 1"x1"x8", one for each row of LEDs; I assume they're transformers. It occurs to me that since the problem affects one whole row at a time, the transformer is probably to blame and I might be able to get a replacement transformer. Although its electrical attachments are soldered, and I'm not sure I have soldering stuff.
I contact the manufacturer, who says "send us some pictures or video", so I attach a few seconds of video and they say "We'll send out a replacement unit"; apparently it's still under warranty.
Last Friday, the replacement unit -- the whole fixture, not just a transformer -- arrives on the doorstep. We're sorta busy with early music classes for the weekend, so don't do anything with it immediately. By this time one row of LEDs on the old unit is no longer flickering, but consistently at 1/4 brightness. The box boasts that the unit can be easily installed by one person.
Yesterday afternoon I open up the box and read the directions. They've provided a round mounting bracket, about 4" across, which screws onto the junction box, and a hook-and-chain arrangement so you can hang the rest of the fixture from the mounting bracket while you make the electrical attachments, then fit two lollipop-shaped holes in the fixture over two screw-heads sticking out of the mounting bracket, rotate a bit, and it's attached. This does sound easy, especially since the replacement unit is the same model as the original so the mounting bracket is presumably already there: I should be able to just rotate, make sure the hanging chain is still hooked, detach the wires, unhook the old fixture and put it on the floor, hang the new fixture from the chain, attach the wires, and rotate into place. Sounds like about five minutes' work.
So I find which circuit breaker controls that fixture, turn it off (conveniently, the over-sink light fixture is on a different circuit so the room isn't completely dark), and climb up on a chair to start this. I don't actually see any screw heads sticking out from the lollipop-shaped holes; instead, there's a screw head in each of the eight little dents. Which suggests that the replacement is not exactly the same model: presumably they've redesigned it for single-person installation in the three years since we bought the original. Anyway, I start removing the screws: they're about 3" long, with a coarse, steep thread angle. With![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere standing on another chair keeping the fixture from crashing to the floor, I remove the last screws. There's no round mounting bracket up there, just wires going into the junction box. It's fairly easy to disconnect the house wires from the fixture wires, and we place the old fixture gently on the floor.
One is supposed to attach the round mounting bracket to the junction box "using existing screws on the junction box". The only "existing screws" I see are on opposite corners of the junction box, farther apart than the diameter of the mounting bracket, so that won't work. There are some screw holes inside the junction box, but the box is 2" deep, set into the ceiling, so we'll need something over 2" long to connect those screw holes to a fixture that's flush with the ceiling. Either the circular mounting bracket is almost-flush with the ceiling, in which case I need 2+" screws to hang it from the top of the junction box, or it's almost-flush with the top of the junction box (which it sorta-almost fits inside), in which case I need 2+" screws to hang the fixture from it, and both of these arrangements sound sorta wobbly.
I conclude that the previous fixture was the same model as this one, and that when the kitchen installers encountered this same dilemma, they resolved the issue by abandoning the circular mounting bracket, putting holes in the dents, and screwing it to the ceiling through those instead. That's been working well for three years, so I figure I can do the same. A 1/8" drill bit fits through the holes in the old fixture, while the next size up doesn't, so I start punching and drilling 1/8" holes in the dents of the new fixture.
To Be Continued...
Two or three weeks ago: the kitchen ceiling light fixture starts flickering irritatingly. I open the diffuser to see what's up, and find that one of the two rows of LEDs is just fine, while most of the other is alternating between full brightness and about 1/4 brightness at random time intervals (but in sync, all at once).
The fixture is basically a sheet of metal with about sixty LEDs attached to the surface somehow, and two rectangular boxes about 1"x1"x8", one for each row of LEDs; I assume they're transformers. It occurs to me that since the problem affects one whole row at a time, the transformer is probably to blame and I might be able to get a replacement transformer. Although its electrical attachments are soldered, and I'm not sure I have soldering stuff.
I contact the manufacturer, who says "send us some pictures or video", so I attach a few seconds of video and they say "We'll send out a replacement unit"; apparently it's still under warranty.
Last Friday, the replacement unit -- the whole fixture, not just a transformer -- arrives on the doorstep. We're sorta busy with early music classes for the weekend, so don't do anything with it immediately. By this time one row of LEDs on the old unit is no longer flickering, but consistently at 1/4 brightness. The box boasts that the unit can be easily installed by one person.
Yesterday afternoon I open up the box and read the directions. They've provided a round mounting bracket, about 4" across, which screws onto the junction box, and a hook-and-chain arrangement so you can hang the rest of the fixture from the mounting bracket while you make the electrical attachments, then fit two lollipop-shaped holes in the fixture over two screw-heads sticking out of the mounting bracket, rotate a bit, and it's attached. This does sound easy, especially since the replacement unit is the same model as the original so the mounting bracket is presumably already there: I should be able to just rotate, make sure the hanging chain is still hooked, detach the wires, unhook the old fixture and put it on the floor, hang the new fixture from the chain, attach the wires, and rotate into place. Sounds like about five minutes' work.
So I find which circuit breaker controls that fixture, turn it off (conveniently, the over-sink light fixture is on a different circuit so the room isn't completely dark), and climb up on a chair to start this. I don't actually see any screw heads sticking out from the lollipop-shaped holes; instead, there's a screw head in each of the eight little dents. Which suggests that the replacement is not exactly the same model: presumably they've redesigned it for single-person installation in the three years since we bought the original. Anyway, I start removing the screws: they're about 3" long, with a coarse, steep thread angle. With
shalmestere standing on another chair keeping the fixture from crashing to the floor, I remove the last screws. There's no round mounting bracket up there, just wires going into the junction box. It's fairly easy to disconnect the house wires from the fixture wires, and we place the old fixture gently on the floor.One is supposed to attach the round mounting bracket to the junction box "using existing screws on the junction box". The only "existing screws" I see are on opposite corners of the junction box, farther apart than the diameter of the mounting bracket, so that won't work. There are some screw holes inside the junction box, but the box is 2" deep, set into the ceiling, so we'll need something over 2" long to connect those screw holes to a fixture that's flush with the ceiling. Either the circular mounting bracket is almost-flush with the ceiling, in which case I need 2+" screws to hang it from the top of the junction box, or it's almost-flush with the top of the junction box (which it sorta-almost fits inside), in which case I need 2+" screws to hang the fixture from it, and both of these arrangements sound sorta wobbly.
I conclude that the previous fixture was the same model as this one, and that when the kitchen installers encountered this same dilemma, they resolved the issue by abandoning the circular mounting bracket, putting holes in the dents, and screwing it to the ceiling through those instead. That's been working well for three years, so I figure I can do the same. A 1/8" drill bit fits through the holes in the old fixture, while the next size up doesn't, so I start punching and drilling 1/8" holes in the dents of the new fixture.
To Be Continued...
