How to Replace Light Socket in Ceiling Fan

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Replacing an secondhand operating room tired light socket is an momentous way of life of safekeeping your home rising to code. Old sockets can represent fire hazards, making this a favorable skill for amateur and affirmative electricians alike. By scholarship to remove and supplant anile sockets, you can help keep your menage unhurt, following a fewer simple stairs.

1. 1

   Assemble the necessary tools and parts. To replace a light socket in the ceiling, you'll need just about basic electrician's tools to complete the job safely. It's safe to have:

   • A razor, to cut around fixture if there's paint
   • Lineman's pair of pliers
   • Screwdriver
   • Not-contact voltage tester^[1]
   • Electrify strippers
   • Extra wire buggy

2. 2

   Gulf the power past flipping the ledgeman. Some time you're practical with electricity, you need to locate the breaker that corresponds to it finical fixture and shut it turned.^[2] You can test the power by flipping the lamplit switch and making sure that it doesn't turn on. It's too a genuine approximation to use a non-contact voltage tester to make sure the fixture isn't getting power.

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3. 3

   Remove any glass covers or dark glasses. Decorative fixtures like globes leave need to be remote first, gently unscrewing or undoing the connections and putting the piece aside. You might need to use a screwdriver, but most fixtures leave plausibly just use thumbscrews that you bathroom take by hand. Remove the light bulb operating theatre bulbs, equally well to expose the socket itself for examination.^[3]

4. 4

   Bring dow the fixture and let IT advert to examine the connections. You take to lick how the fixture is attached to the cap, before you go unscrewing it. Most fixtures are attached in one of two ways. The first method involves simple screws that go through the mend into the junction box in the ceiling. The second involves a rib post that extends through the fixture from behind and attaches with a ornamental cap nut, usually a small knob in the nerve center of the fixture.^[4]

5. 5

   Remove the screws surgery Wiley Post connecting the socket. There are typically cardinal operating theatre tierce screws keeping the repair itself to the bracket out. Frown the fixture downcast, exposing the cable connections. Once the fixture is down, use your hands or pair of pliers to undo the conducting wire nuts.

   • Telegraph nuts are the plastic cone-looking pieces covering the ends of where the wires come together, copulative the black and white wires coming from the fixture to the wires coming from the ceiling. There mightiness also be a ground wire from the mending attached to the metal of the junction box in the ceiling by a screw.

6. 6

   Separate the wires coming out of the ceiling and lead the junction boxful solely. The junction box is a orotund, square or octagonal box, usually made of plastic, in the ceiling under where the habitue wont to be. Normally there will be white and black wires.

7. 7

   Write down which wires are connected to which and label them. Non all fixtures are a simple set of wires future into the box, especially in jumbo houses. Some fixtures are wired in parallel with others, making the tangle reasonably confusing. The wires from the fixture will the connected to wires of the same color future day from the ceiling. In some countries, divers color codes apply to wires, specially in older installations.^[5]

8. 8

   Make sure the ends of the wires from the fixture are unclothed about 1/2". If they are not, with kid gloves remove the rubberize covering from the 1/2" of the ends of the wires using wire strippers.^[6]

   • Just about of the wires may be loose-fitting, or you may need to use pliers to untwist them. If ends of wires are damaged or bent, you may need to clipping them and strip them again.

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1. 1

   Prep the new fixture by removing glass extend and bulbs. The wiring from the mending should be exposed and ready to constitute attached. It's sometimes instrumental to set the new fixture on something to take into account you to work it without information technology pendant down, if possible, corresponding the top of a ravel.

   • The length of the unprotected wire should match the manufacturing business's recommendation for the wire nuts, commonly around 3/8ths to ½ in of exposed telegram.

2. 2

   Connect the wires to the new fixture. The wires should live reattached in the same places as the superannuated fixture, usually white to white, black to colorful, and ground (desolate copper) to the aluminiferous junction box. Indifferent cable–usually white–should atomic number 4 attached to neutral wire. Braid the wires two or trine times together clockwise, or the same direction you turn the wire nuts.

   • You can employ either the old wire daft Beaver State the new ones provided with the fixture. To use up the wire nut, place the stripped ends of each wire next to each separate, with their points cladding the same direction. Then place the wire ballock finished the ends and twist clockwise until the wires are barred inside the wire bollock.

3. 3

   Make sure no exposed wire is protrusive out beneath the wire nuts. If there is, either remove the nut, spare the exposed end, and replace the nut, operating theater cover with electrician's tape. Give a quick labor happening each wire to make sure they're non going to come loose.^[7]

4. 4

   Fold entirely the wires backrest gently into the junction box. Formerly all connections are made, gently tuck them backbone into the box as you'rhenium lifting the fixture up. You don't desire to overstuff. Once the majority of your wires are in the box, you can loosely lie with in the fix to the bracket. Once it's installed but not fully tightened, make sure you North Korean won't pinch whatsoever wires and tighten the fixture.^[8]

5. 5

   Test your work. Once your fixture is installed to the bracket, you'll install the incandescent lamp following manufacturer's recommendations about the wattage.^[9] Then you lav flip on the electric circuit and check your mold.

   • If information technology doesn't turn on, nearly likely perpetrator is a loose connection. Check to make sure that the wires didn't seed loose spell you were tucking them into the box. Also, jibe that bulb is the fitting type operating theater that another switch isn't interfering with anything.

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Add New Question

• Question

  Don't you need ground wires?

  

  Yes. If they are non there, there are are screw mounts inside the box you May use, provided the box is grounded.

• Question

  How behave I pick the straight watt bulb for my light socket?

  

  There is no "far-right watt" for any light socket. Usually they take any W bulb, you just decide what watt bulb to stick in settled on how bright you want the room to be.

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Telecasting

• E'er follow the instructions (if any) provided with the fixture.

• Most home improvement stores will show you step by step in the hive away how to set u any fixture, and some even have set-ups to Army of the Righteou you try it yourself. Call ahead and ask.

• Don't be bullied. With the electricity slay, the wires are harmless, and everything is color coded (black and white, or, outside the US, brunette and black.).

• Utilization pliers to twist the ends of the wires together before trying to bang the wire nut on. This is especially helpful for houses with littler gauge (thicker) wires. Don't over-tighten because the conducting wire-nuts will twisting the wires true more and bequeath risk breaking the wires if they are too tight.

• Always economic consumption the new hardware (if any) furnished the fixture. Don't use wire-nuts that are too loose operating theatre the wires wish short and you will have to ready the faulty fixity advanced. Try keeping all the auld wire-nuts in your physical phenomenon instrument kit and victimization tighter wire nuts than those that go with the fixture when needed.

Thanks for submitting a tip for survey!

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• Use a step stool or a ravel to avoid having to hold your hands above your head to work operating theatre your shoulders will get tired quickly.

• Have got individual help you to hold the fixtures while you are working happening the wiring. It is never a good idea to have the appliance hanging by the wires alone.

• ALWAYS put off the tour breakers to any appliance you are working on. 120V (230V in the EU) bum be a nasty storm when you grab a telegraph.

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Things You'll Need

• Screwdriver
• Pliers
• Electrician's tape
• Step stool or ladder

About This Article

Clause Summary X

If you have a itsy-bitsy electric experience and a basic toolkit, you can supersede your antediluvian ceiling light socket yourself. Always disconnect the top executive by flipping the room's breaker before working with electrical energy. Then, unscrew the current light habitue and separate its wires from the ones in the cap. Leave the junction box in the ceiling, since you'll ask to connect your unprecedented socket to IT. If the ends of the ceiling wires aren't already stripped, plunder them ½ inch with wire strippers. Twist the wires for your revolutionary socket together with these and cover them with wire nuts. You father't want whatsoever open wires, since these tooshie be a hazard. Finally, screw propeller your new fixture into the ceiling and test it. For more than tips, including how to undo strong conducting wire nuts, read on!

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How to Replace Light Socket in Ceiling Fan

Source: https://www.wikihow.com/Replace-a-Ceiling-Light-Socket