Ikea lighting fixtures ceiling mount help

[Sorin]

Hello everyone,

I will try to explain this in english (my dutch is not that great..) however I also don't know all the terms so I hope it will make some sense and someone could give me a hand. Thanks in advance! I am trying to mount some ceiling lights, probably the solution is very obvious but since I've never done this before, I would need a bit of help.

In the first photo the cover plate of the central box is visible fixed onto the ceiling. It has an integrated (not sure if that is the right term) power strip, that I can't remove, into which the L&N (blue & brown) wires are connected. I mention that without removing the plate from the ceiling I can't understand to which of the two slots the L&N wires are connected. I also don't want to remove the cover plate as you see from the picture what happens with the ceiling in case of doing that. In the second photo is the lighting fixture. I also attach the ikea instructions, thought it would be very straight forward since it's ikea but turns out I lack some basic knowledge.



The light fixture has, as well, a power strip onto which it's own L&N wires are connected.

Wondering a few things:

1. How can I connect the lighting fixture to the cables of the electrical system? Do I need other two wires that I use to connect the power strip of the lighting fixture to the one from the coverplate of the central box? Is that safe?

2. How do I know where to connect the L&N wires to the coverplate of the central box, since they have no marking of which is L&N and I can't see how the cables behind are connected, without opening it?

3. The lighting fixture has it's own support plate that is supposed to be fixed onto the ceiling and than the fixture is mounted onto that. Am I supposed to mount this directly into the coverplate of the central box or remove the coverplate and install instead of it? Wondering, since the ground (yellow-green wire) is also present (the lighting fixture doesn't have a connection for that however) and trying to understand how to place it so that it doesn't interfere or get too close to the L&N wires.

Hope someone can give me a hand!
Thanks a lot!

Sorin

 

[Tom345]

Hi Sorin,

To connect the fixture, the easiest is to get two short pieces of blue and brown stiff wire ("VD-draad" in Dutch). You can also cut off the connection block from the fixture, strip the wires and crimp ferrules onto the stripped wires. However, I doubt that you own crimping pliers for ferrules.

To determine which is L and which is N, you can measure the voltage between each of the connections and the earth wire. It is about 230 V for L and less than 30 V for N. For a light fixture, it is however not critical if you connect L to N and vice versa.

To fix it, you need to measure the distance between the screw holes in the ground plate of the fixture and compare that to the distance of the bolts in the mounting plate in the ceiling ("centraaldoos"). If the distance is the same, you can remove the existing M4-bolts from the centraaldoos, get longer bolts and use those to mount the fixture. If the distance is not the same, you can try if you can drill new holes into the fixture. Otherwise you would need to drill into the ceiling. The last option, I would leave to an electrician, as there is a strong risk of drilling into wires.

You are not supposed to permanently remove the cover of the centraaldoos as that cover plays a role in fire protection.

 

[Sorin]

Dear Tom,

Thank you for your very clear and prompt reaction. Very helpful. I will do as you suggested.

Sorin