It is required to connect a chandelier after a major overhaul in an apartment or buying a new product. The idea of getting an electrician looks appealing, but it has its drawbacks. Orders from professionals are scheduled weeks ahead, and an inexperienced craftsman can do more harm than good. You can connect the lamp yourself. To do this, you need to stock up on a set of household tools, familiarize yourself with the rules of electrical work and safety measures.
Safety engineering
Carelessness when working with electricity is fraught with not only a damaged device or burnt wiring. Electric shock can cause serious injury, disability, or even death.
To initially exclude such consequences, the following rules must be observed:
- before starting installation, de-energize the room by turning off the bag or unscrewing the plugs in the dashboard;
- use tools with protective insulation rated for 1000 V;
- work on a solid and stable support, excluding loss of balance;
- do not use cables with damaged insulation.
First of all, it is necessary to determine the polarity of the conductors in the cable and find the grounding. For this, an indicator or a multifunctional tester is used. The presence of a phase is indicated by the light of the lamp or changes in the readings on the display.
If the line is new, the wires have a certain color of insulation:
- phase - brown (black);
- zero - blue;
- grounding - yellow-green.
After examining the line on the ceiling, you should determine the polarity of the channels that are used to connect to the contacts of the switch. If it is a standard one-key, there will be 2 wires (zero and phase). Two-key products have 2 phases and 1 zero.
Novice masters believe that you can connect the wire to the switch in any order, not knowing what will happen if you mix up the phase and zero when connecting the chandelier. If you insert the switch into the zero break, the lamp will be under constant voltage, regardless of the position of the keys. This is fraught with electric shock when replacing burnt items and flickering of LED lamps. It is only necessary to connect correctly in the phase gap.
You can connect the wires in the chandelier in the following ways:
- Twisting. Allowed in cases where the conductors are made of the same metal. It is forbidden to combine copper and aluminum, as corrosion develops as a result of an electrochemical reaction, which breaks the contact. The twist is closed with a plastic cap or wrapped with electrical tape.
- Bolt with nut and washers. The ends of the wires are inserted between the washers, after which the nut is tightened. The assembly is covered with insulating material.
- Mounting block. Compact and convenient device, which is a steel switch in a plastic case. Can connect up to 10 pairs of wires.
- Soldering. Applies to copper only.
Having decided on the work plan, you need to draw up a diagram, carry out calculations and purchase everything you need.
Required chandelier mounting tool
To connect the chandelier with your own hands, you will need the following tools and equipment:
- a stepladder or stable sturdy table;
- tester;
- indicator;
- puncher;
- curly and straight screwdrivers;
- nippers;
- pliers;
- stationery knife;
- soldering iron;
- marker;
- protective glasses.
To make a high-quality installation of a chandelier, you need the following materials;
- solder;
- rosin;
- insulating tape;
- switching unit;
- cable with copper conductors with a cross section of 1 mm;
- fixture for fixing the luminaire (dowel with hook, steel hanger, wooden bar).
In order not to injure your head on the floor slab, it is advisable to use a construction helmet or a thick leather hat.
Preparatory work
You can visually find the ground in the old wiring. Since the products made in the past did not have such a contact, the excess wire was bent to the sides or cut off so as not to interfere.
When replacing a chandelier, you need to ring all the veins in order to establish their integrity, find zero and phases. The check is carried out under voltage. You should alternately bring the probe to each wire. The presence of current will be indicated by the glow of the indicator. To exclude the classification of stray currents as phases, it is necessary to duplicate the measurements with the tester. To do this, move the probes to the zero and active channel. The device will show the mains voltage. If it matches the standard parameters, the line is good. In conclusion, all wires need to be marked in any convenient way.
Fixing the chandelier to the ceiling of the room
Hanging on a hook
In the majority of buildings built according to the type series, the hooks were originally foreseen by the project. If this product is available, it must be tested for strength under a load of 8-10 kg. If the fasteners are secure, you can hang the lamp.
To fix the hook yourself, you need to do the following:
- Determine where to drill. It should be remembered that the cable should only be laid at right angles to the walls. In order not to damage it, you need to retreat from its exit by 3 cm towards the corner.
- Drill a hole. Insert the dowel into it, screw in the hook. If you need to hang a heavy five-arm chandelier, it is better to use an anchor bolt, which has great strength.
- Wrap the hook with a thick layer of duct tape.
After that, you can hang the product and connect the wires.
Mounting on a mounting plate
The mounting plate is included with the wall and ceiling mount products.
You need to install the lighting device in the following sequence:
- Align the mounting bolts with the holes in the decorative cover. Tighten them with hooks (it is extremely difficult to do this at a height).
- Attach the plank to the ceiling, mark the drilling sites. Make holes, insert dowels into them.
- Screw the strip to the floor slab, check that it is firmly seated.
- After connecting the wires, screw the lamp to the strip.
If a control panel is included with the luminaire, the receiving device is preliminarily fixed in a decorative cap.
Features of fastening to a plasterboard ceiling
Drywall is not designed for heavy loads, you cannot hang a lighting device on it.
The options can be as follows:
- On a supporting steel profile at the point of its attachment to the vertical suspension. A hook or mounting plate can be attached to the metal frame. Screwing is carried out with self-tapping screws for metal.
- On the mounting platform. This structure is assembled in advance, simultaneously with the assembly of the frame.After mounting the sheets, holes are made in them through which the device is screwed.
Fastening to a stretch ceiling
To hang the luminaire on a stretch ceiling, you need to make a base for fastening in advance. It is made from a block of wood, several layers of plywood or hangers for a steel profile. The level of the platform should be 1-2 mm higher than that of the stretched blade. After installation and cooling of the film, PVC rings are glued to it in the right places. Inside the rings, the canvas is cut, through them you can connect to the network in one of the available ways.
Chandelier connection diagrams
If a single switch is installed in the room, there can be only one installation option here - a tie-in is made into the phase, and the wires of the chandelier wire are connected to a pair coming out of the ceiling.
If a three-arm lamp has 2 wires, and the switch is double, you can disassemble the lamp and bring out the lines from each arm. This will make it possible to turn on all lamps or their groups. If there is no such desire, then the third wire (phase) is not activated, but isolated.
To connect a chandelier with three wires, when there are 2 phases in the laid cable, you can bring brown wires to the supply ends, and connect the blue ones to zero. This will make it possible to turn on groups of luminaires at once or separately.
When there are many wires on the chandelier, their connection to the three-core cable on the ceiling is carried out by analogy with the previous case. All blue channels are fixed to zero. The brown ones are connected to the phases according to the plan (1 + 2, 2 + 2, 1 + 3, 2 + 4, etc.).
Connecting a chandelier to a switch block with a socket begins with determining the phases and zero. After that, the phases are connected to the contacts of the switch, and the zero line is attached to the corresponding terminal in the socket.
