Safe Luxury

How do you make the wires safe before you put a blanking plate on when you remove wall lights.?

We want to remove 2 wall lights, but we do not want to permanently remove the wires, so we will use blanking plates, but are not sure how you make the wires safe first. Does anyone have suggestions please?

Public Comments

1. Put wire nuts on the ends & then tape the nuts.
2. Make sure power is turned off at breaker or switch. Be careful sometimes when u turn the switch off the line may be still be hot. Do one wire at a time put a wire nut on one line then tape it with electrical tape, then the other don't skimp on the tape and you'll be ok. Put the plate on until later use. Do not touch the wires together without it being wire nutted and taped. If a novice use rubber gloves and /or get an electrician. To find the breaker plug in a lamp or turn on what is on that circuit then turn a breaker off one at a time if by ur self use a radio so u can hear when it turns off.
3. Wrap insulating tape on each wire then fold the wire insert inside the box then blanking plate, good luck
4. g
5. Use wire nuts. They are plastic screw-ons that grasp the ends of the wires and effectively insulate such ends so as not to be able to have such wire ends interact with other wires. A good handyman article that incidentally discusses the use of wire nuts is found at the following link: http://yourhandymanzone.com/Your_Handyman_Zone_How_To_Pages_Home_Improvement_Zone_Electrical_Switches_Install_A_Dimmer_Switch.htm Good luck!
6. You don't say where you are. If you are in the UK you will need to use connector blocks (min 5amp rating) as we stopped using screw on type connections, such as wire nuts /midgets, many years ago. Connector blocks are widely available from diy shops. Don't rely on turning the wall switch off to make the cables dead as there may still be live cables present. It is probably simpler for you to turn off the main switch (Usually the biggest switch at your fuseboard) After making sure that the cables are definitely dead, put the cables into your connector in exactly the same order as they were connected in the fitting. ie if a black and red cable were connected together in the fitting they must be connected together when you reconnect them. Many people make the mistake of not noting how it came apart. Put all your earth cables together and after gently tugging at all the cables to make sure it doesn't fall apart tape the connectors up before pushing back into the wall and covering with your blank plate. You may be lucky and find that on removing the old lights you have existing connectors you can retain. In which case visually check there are no loose strands of copper after disconnecting the light and simply tape the connectors up. If in any doubt of how to make it safe don't attempt it yourself, get someone in. Electricity kills.