For about six months now we had issues with our recessed lights in the basement. These lights were installed in 2018 when our basement flooded.
They were doing some eerie things. You would turn the switch on and one would illuminate. You try again and all six would turn on. Or you turn them on and 4 would be at 25% illumination and two would be off. All seemingly random.
To this day, I still don’t know what the actual problem was, but after testing out new switches and new recessed lighting along with Gaetan, we realized that putting new recessed lighting in did the trick so that’s what we stuck with. Maybe a strange surge affected all six lights? Or maybe they just all decided to die on me at the same time? I have no idea.
At first I thought replacing the lighting would be a pain but it was actually quite simple.
- Turn breaker off.
- Disconnect the LED light from the driver box. Here’s a photo of the box.
3. Take LED light out. Watch your fingers near those springs!
4. If your light is at the end of a line (imagine six lights all strung together and you are working on the last one), then you will see two black wires going into a plastic connector. If you are working on lights in the middle of the series then you will see three black wires going into a plastic connector. You will also see three white into another connector and three grounds going into a final connector.
Here’s a photo of the final driver in the series of six lights. Note that there are only two wires into each connector.
5. To take the wires out, just wiggle the connector while pulling the wire out. I didn’t know this at first and was trying to pull them out with wiggling and it was a pain.
6. Once you have taken all the wires out, you can use some pliers to squeeze the grey plastic protector protecting the actual home wiring to get it out of the driver case. Dispose of the case afterwards.
7. Crack open the new driver case and connect all the black wires into the black connector, etc etc etc.
From here everything should be simple.