ᐅ Connecting a spotlight to an electrical outlet..?

Are the spotlights connected directly to 220V or through a transformer? If the cables are thin and only two-core, stay away from it—you could end up burning the house down.

Nida35a schrieb:

Are the spotlights connected to 220V or through a transformer?
If the cables are thin and two-core only, stay away from them, you’ll burn the house down.

There is absolutely no risk of anything burning. There are circuit breakers and RCDs in place to prevent any fire. If he applies 24V DC to the socket, at most the connected devices might get damaged (and even that is not guaranteed). That is why the advice to have a professional do it was already given.

Sparfuchs_:p schrieb:

Nothing actually catches fire there. There are circuit breakers and residual current devices before anything can burn.

Don’t rely on that; it can still catch fire. Excessive current heats the cables. The dielectric material burns away, and then a fire starts. It’s a short circuit that trips the breaker, not the heat. You can try this in your garden: put a load on a coiled extension cable drum resting on straw. It will catch fire before—or just after—the fuse blows.

hampshire schrieb:

Load on a coiled cable reel in straw. It catches fire before a fuse trips.

However, it wasn’t about a coiled cable reel but about a 24V direct current socket. That was probably the danger being pointed out. In my case, above the drywall there is non-combustible mineral wool insulation, not straw, and no 50m (165 feet) tightly coiled cable with a 3kW load.

Even if I had 50m (165 feet) of coiled cable up there and a 3kW load... I would bet everything that the residual current device (RCD) would trip before my mineral wool insulation or the roof beam caught fire. And even if it didn’t, that would be a theoretical scenario in an LED spotlight installation.

Here, we are talking about LED spotlights with maybe a total of 100W, without straw and without tightly coiled cables.

hampshire schrieb:

Only a short circuit trips it,

The RCD also trips on residual current.

You have probably already understood this: do not rely solely on fuses or circuit breakers when working with electricity. Fires can still occur from improper installation despite proper protection devices. Giving an obvious non-professional a false sense of security is, in my opinion, not helpful. There are many other mistakes that people without expertise can come up with; non-professionals can be quite creative. Placing an extension reel on straw is just one of many examples.

hampshire schrieb:

I consider it unhelpful to give an obvious layperson a false sense of security.

That’s why I have already recommended consulting a professional, not only for myself 😉

I think we understand each other and basically agree. In this case, the basics are missing → get a professional. In my post about not taking risks, I was specifically referring to the case of connecting an outlet to two thin live wires. Nothing more, nothing less. I never said there are only 10,000 ways to cause a fire through electrical work and that circuit breakers are a cure-all.

However, I admit that one could read more into it than was actually written and come to this wrong conclusion. We have now clearly clarified that 🙂