Downlight Installation Consultation & Google Review Trust
Hi, this is John Dale from GlobileNet, your local friendly electrician. We often get clients wanting downlights installed, and Jason was one of those clients who had seen us on Google and our reviews, so decided to get us to have a look.
Two-Storey Lighting Upgrade & Access Constraints
He wanted to replace all the downstairs lights in a two-story home. Now, that’s always a bit challenging. I mean, when we first look at those jobs, and it’s a consultative process, we do tell customers that there could be an expectation that there will be some access holes that have to be drilled.
Ceiling Access Holes vs Workmanship Standards
It’s not really a choice sometimes, but I have seen works where electricians have just gone in and they just, for speed and efficiency, whacked holes everywhere and left quite a mess. Now we don’t do that. We always patch the holes that we make.
Innovative Cable Routing via Air-Conditioning Ducting
But we look innovatively about how we can get cables through. Now The first thing I look for in a downstairs area like that is, is there existing ducting – air-conditioned ducting – because typically every room will have a duct, and we can remove that duct, take the vent off of the ducting that’s in the ceiling, and then we can get access to the space where we can drill through beams that are running parallel or in front of us that would normally not allow us to run cables between the downlights. So, it’s very useful when you have that situation because we can save a hell of a lot of holes for the customer.
Switch Wiring Modifications & Wall Plate Reconfiguration
What often happens though is the customer, in this case as well, wanted to get us to change the lighting switching arrangements, which means that you have to really take the switch off the wall and then hopefully pull a wire up without making any access holes. Quite often that’s not going to be the case, so we have to drill a 90mm hole. Usually we’ll pick the ceiling so that we don’t leave any damage on the wall so that we can actually grab the wires that go down to the switch or just drop a new wire down to the switch.
Ceiling Cut-Outs, Patch Work & Paint Finishing
In this case, I think we ended up with about 5 holes in total. We did patch them up and did a little paint job over them just to make them less visible. But the customer is always notified that if they want the paint and decorating with a professional finish, then they’ll need to engage a painter really. Because typically when you do that sort of patching, you really need to paint the whole ceiling or the whole wall or the affected area. Just patching it will always be visible anyway.
Customer Satisfaction & Minimal Damage Electrical Work
Jason was really, really happy that we didn’t drill a thousand holes, and he acknowledged how challenging it was. And we were just very happy to be able to meet my promise, because other electricians say “oh no, you can’t do it”. But when you’ve got the experience, and you use a bit of creativity, most of these things can be done with minimal damage.
Local Electrician Service & Downlight Installation Expertise
So if you’d like to engage with a local electrical company that seeks to minimise any damage when you put downlights in, please call us at GlobileNet. Thank you.
