multiple pendant lighting... yet again juxt needs help :P

so whilst snooping around the wonders of the worldwide spamjaculator, i found a photo of a rather pricey light setup that i like. but the price tag seems extremely unneccessary to me. methinks a homegrown version is in order.



now, being completely inept with the wires and cables and electricity, i'm looking for some advice and ideas from you guys.
the hardware shopping list for the most part seems easy enough- 30 or 40m of flex, 10 or 12 pendant bulb holders, 10 or 12 light bulbs, 10 or 12 hooks to suspend the lights from.
the bit that has me stumped (mainly due to my unbelievable lack of electrical knowledge) is how do i hook up 12 lights to a single fitting?
i'm guessing a cheap chandelier might be a good starting point, since they effectively run multiple bulbs that offshoot from a central stem...


(for those that remember my previous lighting project... its coming along slowly, i'm having problems holding a 6 1/2" piece of aluminium in my lathe which only has a swing allowing a 6" piece. i should be making headway with that this week though, a solution has been discovered.)

Assuming that you are connecting them in parallel (which is how most chandeliers are hooked up) then you connect all of the blue wires together in one bundle, and all of the brown wires together in another bundle (assuming british wiring colours) and hook the incoming live wire to the brown bundle and the neutral to the blue bundle. This might be difficult if you are trying to use a screw terminal to connect them. If so, I'd bundle them in groups of three or four and hook those bundles up to one terminal It will take slightly more wiring but it's not tricky.

I hope that this makes sense, if not then I'll try and clarify...

Z.

The Juxt wrote:they effectively run multiple bulbs that offshoot from a central stem...

Thats pretty much how you do it, just attach all the bulbs to the live, neutral and ground at the switch. Or atleast that's how I've wired things in my mad scientist lamp and a few other lights- I had the bulbs in series so they were dimmer but I just branched the wire 2 ways at the switch for the voltmeter and the bulbs, voltmeter read 240 volts and the bulbs were at half brightness (from being in series) seemed to work fine

I like doodles to explain circuits:

Code:


  Switch
  |      |
  |      |
  |      |
bulb  voltmeter
  |      |
bulb      |
  |      |
back to the switch


thanks guys

that actually sounds really easy, especially now i'm starting to understand simple circuits and wiring.
i'll have to knock up a quick proof of concept to show her indoors, and then get down to it

I'd be a bit careful about building do it yourself light fittings on that scale as the building regs are getting very tough on the electrical side of things. The number of tasks that can be done by unqualified persons is very limited. Pretty much restricted to fitting new fixtures to existing circuits. Anything which requires new circuits now has to be done by a sparky who can self certify the work to "part P" of the regs.

Proceed with caution and get proper expert advice.

Dr. Q.

If the regulations worry you then make sure you don't break them. Make the light, and fit a plug on the end. Then plug it in.

I haven't yet seen a regulation that states that you can't plug something you wired yourself in.

Z.

i'm going to make the entire thing as one or two seperate objects that can be taken down and move house with me, so it'll just be like fitting a shop bought light to the mains, right?

thank you for the heads up though i often need reminding when it comes to laws and regulations