Is Battery Operated Undercab Lighting Stupid?

sallysue_2010

13 years ago

Opinions?

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Comments (5)

palimpsest
13 years ago
I can see it having dead batteries a lot of the time. I have known a couple of people who put those battery operated lights in their closets, and there was still never one that worked.
brickton
13 years ago
If you don't have many uppers and you have a real need for task lighting now, then I think it might have its place.

However the drawbacks of having to individually turn them on and change batteries would to me make them a temporary solution. If you really want undercabinet lighting, I would wait until you could afford a wired / connected option. Unless this is a rental or you have a pressing need.
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>>>I wondered what a transformer was for if the wires can go straight through the wall into the light - why would anyone want a transformer? Most lighting in your house is powered by standard house voltage: 120 volts, AC, 60Hz. By code, no cable carrying house voltage can be run through a living space without conduit, either a metal box (like you sometimes see attached to concrete walls) or the round metal bendable conduit. This is why most cable in your house is in the walls. When you open an outlet or switch, you see cable coming into those boxes that carry house voltage. Again, by code, any connections have to be in an approved junction box. Low voltage under-cab lights solve this problem. Because they use 12 Volts DC, the wires that carry this (not at all dangerous) voltage can be run without conduit, or not behind walls. The problem is that you have to convert your house voltage (dangerous 120V AC) to the 12 volts these lights need. To do this, you need a transformer. In my case, I decided to put the transformer in the valance above my sink. This places it out of the living space, but accessible if it ever burned out. Here is a picture during installation: The yellow cable is house voltage, coming from the switch. In this photo, I have it temporarily connected outside a junction box (which I added later). From the transformer I ran six low-voltage cables, one for each light. I ran these cables inside the cabinets. Here is what the underside of one of my cabs looks like: You'll see that I just tied the wires up with these sticky pads, which hold them out of the way. From your description, I don't know if your lights are low voltage or house voltage. If they are house voltage, then I suspect your electrician is right - each place where they exit the wall they need a junction box. BTW, below is the final result of the valance, buttoned up and hiding the transformer and wires:
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All of our kitchen lights are on dimmers. We've found that the UC lights are the first ones on in the morning while we stumble to the coffee pot, and they're the last ones off at night. The only time I seem to use either of the 2 banks of can lights in the ceiling is when I am prepping or standing over the stove cooking. (no hood lights.. no hood for that matter). About 75% of the time, I don't even use the can lights when prepping. I am not sure why we use the UC lights so much more, but I'd venture a guess that it's because they're enough light for most tasks we do in the kitchen and they're usually on, and we're too lazy to walk to the other side of the island to turn on the can lights? hehe We rarely have the UC lights turned up to full power, and when we do, we turn them down as soon as we're done doing whatever we were doing that required the add'l light. They're halogens, and if we leave them at full power for very long - things get pretty warm! It was NOT one of those items that I obessessed over, and wish I had - because if I did, I wouldn't have chose halogens (pretty much, I let the electrician choose, a decision I've come to regret!). The light is great, but the heat they can muster up is a real downer. At any rate, I'm sold on having UC lights regardless.
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Even thin lights may show when you are sitting and look into the kitchen. It seems most new kitchen installs are done with a light rail added to hide the lights behind. We did an update several years ago and kept our old cabinets which had no light rail or moulding below the boxes. DH is rather handy and we bought some oak (our cabinets are oak) corner moulding about 3/4 or an inch wide. I got stain matched up at a good paint store. Cloverdale I believe and they can make stain to match if you bring in a door from your cabinets. We installed that below the cabinets and I stained and varnished the. They gave a little update to the cabinet look and do a great job of hiding our UCL's. They look like they were always on the cabinets and match perfectly. He also installed our UCL and drilled small holes in the bottom of the cabinet, fished the wire thru them and then behind, thru the wall studs up to a soffit where we have access. Wired in an on and off and dimmer switch in our Zephyr fan hood since it has lots of room in the metal body. Virtually no wire showing and the light switch is with the fan light switch. DH is so innovative!
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writersblock (9b/10a)
13 years ago
It really depends. I have a neighbor who has a total of about 50" of upper cabinets and no way to add wiring, so a couple of battery operated puck lights works for her, but in a full-scale kitchen where there's another option I'd rather have real lighting.
mtnfever (9b AZ/HZ 11)
13 years ago
I tried and it wasn't worth it for the light I had.

I have only 40" of uppers for UCL so I thought what the heck, let's try a battery LED UCL: 12 LEDs on four lights, each could be aimed individually. Unfortunately they just weren't bright enough to start with and then as the batteries faded, the lights gradually got dimmer (ha self dimming) until I realized there wasn't any difference that I could tell with them on or off.

as Pal mentioned, the light is now going to our extremely dark rv closet, which ANYkind of light will help.

Now for my UCL, I put in plug-in LED which has three 12-light bars. Duh on me, three times the bulbs and three times the light. I actually prefer to prep there after dark now.

HTH
sallysue_2010
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks very much for the feedback - I sorta knew it sounded too good to be true. A month ago I never actually thought about undercab lights when we had our cabinet guy installing new cabinets at the same time we had an electrician for the fan. That might have been the best time to think about such things, but never crossed my mind....

Oh no, i must be crossing into some sort of semi-TKO land, not full on, but waaay more than ever before!

Floor install starts Monday :)

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Is Battery Operated Undercab Lighting Stupid?

Comments (5)

palimpsest

brickton

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Is Battery Operated Undercab Lighting Stupid?

Comments (5)

palimpsest

brickton

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writersblock (9b/10a)

mtnfever (9b AZ/HZ 11)

sallysue_2010Original Author

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sallysue_2010
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