Fitting under cabinet lights

Beardedlaydee

When our kitchen was fitted the guy who did it left the under cabinet lights as he wasn't confident in electrics.
Basically what we have is a cable (I have been told the wrong sort) running from the mains socket on the wall behind the tiles and coming out at the bottom of the cabinet. It's not connected to anything but we will need to use it to guide the new cable through the hole. Apparently he should have wired it in from the lighting circuit but he didn't and now its too late to be done.
My question is:
What sort of cable will we need to use. Will we need some sort of fuse box/transformer to reduce the current?

Many thanks!

jennifernil

We have lights under several cabinets. In the kitchen we have small fluorescent strip lights, in the study halogen downlighters. In both cases the wire(s) to them are fixed neatly under the cabinets and simply plugged into an adjacent socket using a plug fitted with an appropriate fuse.

This seems to me to be a simple method, and safe as long as you have RCB (I think it is called) protection on the sockets. Our strip lights have individual switches, while the downlighters have one switch controlling them all.

The wiring is ordinary 3 core flex of an appropriate rating.

Whether that is the proper way to do it I have no idea, but it seems to work!

Beardedlaydee

Thanks for that, we may have to do it that way but I was trying to avoid taking up the wall sockets as we only have 4 and need to plug in 2 lights (along with our kettle and toaster). Also I wanted the wires hidden.
The quest continues.....

madjay

Install a 13amp Switched Fused Connection Unit fed By 2.5mm² T&E from the socket oulet. From the Fused Connection Unit run 1.5mm² T&E to where you want the lights.

jennifernil

Beardedlaydee wrote: »

Thanks for that, we may have to do it that way but I was trying to avoid taking up the wall sockets as we only have 4 and need to plug in 2 lights (along with our kettle and toaster). Also I wanted the wires hidden.
The quest continues.....

We have all our lights wired together so they only use one socket, which is fine if they are near each other as ours are (L-shaped layout), but yes, you will lose a socket. We had extra ones put in at the time to allow for that.

We cannot see the wires as there is a pelmet in front of the lights anyway.