Hardwiring under cabinet lights

[Graham12]

Hi all, I want to add some under cabinet LED’s to the kitchen and hardwire them to a light switch.
We had our kitchen newly fitted out sometime back and the electrician has already wired to a spare switch we have and left the other end of the wire in a junction box on top of the cabinets. This because we couldn’t make our minds up what we wanted at the time!
My question is, all the LED’s I’ve seen for sale have a transformer leading to a plug on the end, can I take the plug off and simply wire in to the junction box? Also is there anything I need to be looking for in terms of what is compatible for what I want to do?
Thanks in advance.

 

[littlespark]

Cutting moulded plugs off? There's no reason to.
You'll invalidate the warranty, don't you know.


Oh no... not that subject again!

 

[Dustydazzler]

Never cut a melded plug top off unless absolutely necessary

 

[Zerax]

Thousands of examples of bad practice does,'t make it right. Imagine someone, maybe a wife, going up there and deciding it needs a clean, lugging a high power vacuum cleaner up, and plunging the place into darkness with no floor boards there!...

That's ok George... we're in the EU over here... we're not allowed high powered vacuum cleaners !

 

[naylorpd]

Can you use an FCU with flex outlet?

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Then you keep the right fuse rating for the LED driver.

 

[Dave OCD]

Yes that would be absolutely fine, and I'd say a 3a fuse at most.

 

[Macfish]

AC/DC???? It all sounds like a highway to hell to me.




Seriously though... if there’s space down the back of the units, just drop the lights down there, driver on top of unit, hidden... and plugged in.
Most of these LED kits come with one driver with a number of outputs. If plugging in multiple lights into one, just make sure the total load on each driver doesn’t exceed the max stated output of the driver.