Downlighters and junction boxes

croggy · Post by **croggy** » Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:29 am

I'm upgrading my downlighters, which are powered by 1mm cable daisy chained via small round bakelite junction boxes. The feed cable enters the jb's through cut outs which do not have any form of strain relief.

Do I need to change these to say Hager/Ashley JB's like the J501, which have the strain relief built in?

Or to put it another way, would it be a fail on an EICR either C1 or C2 if I didn't?

Croggy

arco_iris · Post by **arco_iris** » Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:38 am

My recommendation would be to use Wago Boxes (and wago connectors) - other brands are available.

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Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Sat Jan 23, 2021 11:37 am

No, your JB's would not fail, old JB's don't have strain relief.

Wago connectors should be mounted in a box so that they are "isolated" so that you can't poke anything in them. Since they are in a dedicated box you may as well put strain relief on them for when it is needed, since the box should also be secured to something, but hardly anyone does.

Old JB's on the other hand have their terminals inside, so as soon as you put the lid on, the terminals are no longer accessible.

croggy · Post by **croggy** » Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:29 pm

Thanks for the input.

What do you think of Hylec and Debox?

ericmark · Post by **ericmark** » Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:45 pm

If you have cable clips or cleats the JB does not need strain relief. There were rules as to distance between clips, although not seen it being complied with much on a re-wire, it seems the wires are pulled in and left lying on the plaster board.

As the EICR your in the lap of the gods, Code C2 is potentially dangerous, and if it was not potentially dangerous immediately post war can't see in the main why it should be now, OK there are some things today which were not around in the 1950's and in some cases we can't see why some thing is asked for, so we need to play safe.

So if a boiler installation instructions says it should be supplied from a type A 30 mA RCD, then I can see why an inspector would fail it when no RCD provided, same applies to shower or car charging point, so the inspector has to decide and to be frank I could not tell you which makes ask for type AC and which ask for type B which is not helped when installation instructions say after this date type A is good enough and before that date needs type B.

I have no worries with an installation certificate, I have the paperwork for what I am installing, but last thing I want is in 5 years time some one to say you passed this, had you failed it we could have claimed off the builder, now the warranty has expired so we are claiming off you. So the inspector does need to be careful, and they tend to go the other way and fail things that should pass, so we read many times of C2 codes where it seems wrong.

Some times it seems no common sense is used, a ceiling rose should for example shall be capable of carrying a mass of not less than 5 kg (559.6.1.5) I have seen many ceiling roses screwed to plaster board, and some how don't think they would hold 5 kg. Personally I would not fail but maybe I should? So can't say what some one else with fail things on.

croggy · Post by **croggy** » Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:20 am

The ceiling rose is concealed in the ceiling above the downlighter, the same as cables in a back box but while one requires restraint, the other doesn't. Can't see the logic myself.

croggy · Post by **croggy** » Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:04 pm

Went with the wago lighting junction box in the end, fit of a faff getting the 224's in but being smaller than the hager equivalent tipped the balance.