No Earth: A Double Insulated Lighting Case-study
Double Insulated Lights: A case study
During February 2018 we asked a few of our double insulated lighting customers if they would mind telling us about their experiences to help others who may need lighting without an earth.
Peters’ class 2 story.
‘Our lights in our lounge had been up for what seemed like an eternity. They had been there since we had moved in and it was about time that we changed them. I’m not really a DIY person so we arranged for an electrician to come around. We had a few days before he was due so we went to a DIY store and bought some chrome coloured ceiling lights. Our electrician arrived and started to take down our existing lights but when he was halfway through doing this he told me there was a problem. Apparently, our houses electrics didn’t have an earth. Apparently, the earth was a wire that made the light safe in an emergency. Our house was built in the 1960s and according to the electrician it wasn’t unusual for homes around this time to not have one! Because the lights we had bought required an earth, which apparently most do, he couldn’t fit them on our ceiling. We had 2 options. Either we had the house rewired, which to be honest was not going to be an option, financially for us at the moment, or we purchase double insulated lights. We hadn’t heard of double insulated lighting before!
Even worse was the fact that technically the previous lights that we had on our ceiling only 10 minutes before were technically not compliant either as they needed this earth connection as well so the electrician couldn’t refit them! They had been fitted originally long before rules and safety regulations had been standardised apparently! Because of this we took a drive back to the DIY store to get a refund or exchange for the lights we had bought. Unfortunately, nobody at the DIY store knew what we were talking about when it came to double insulated lights so we just took the refund and left bemused. Our electrician, in the meantime, had fitted a couple of basic plastic, one bulb, pendant roses in place of the original lights, which my wife was not particularly thrilled about. He suggested we search on the Internet for double insulated lighting, which we did that evening.
After a little bit of research, we came across the Lightahome website who seemed to specialise in double insulated lighting, amongst other things, so we contacted them by email to ask a few questions. We were reassured what we needed was on their website so we made our choices and ordered. Our new, double insulated, lights arrived within a couple of days and the electrician was rebooked. This time he was more than happy to fit them, as they were fully compliant. The ugly plastic pendants were replaced with nice new chrome lights very quickly.
Both the electrician, who was very understanding & Lightahome turned what was looking like a complete disaster in to a triumph! Thank you to both.’