I did a stupid thing and wired a bunch of recessed lights with AWG14 in my dining room without checking the rating of the power circuit first. The circuit turned out to be 20-Amp, feeding off of the kitchen. I have 3 obvious choices:
1. Re-wire everything with AWG12. and I hate it.
2. Downrate the circuit - change the breaker to 15-Amp.
3. Another circuit: Run the power from another, proper 15-Amp circuit, either through vaulted ceilings or crawl space. Don't know how long it'll take, as I have 15-foot ceilings and have never been in the crawlspace.

Is there another, easier option? Like installing an extra breaker in a small j-box, isolating the 15-Amp-rated sub-circuit from the 20-Amp-rated kitchen circuit? I'm in WA.

Here are the problems with 1,2,3:

1. Re-wire: Obviously I'm an amateurish DIY'er, so that's a day's work for me. These lights are very hard to wire, they're the new LEDs that I barely jammed into 4-inch j-boxes; they're advertised for this purpose, but they are very hard to work with because they're clearly designed to fit into normal 6-inch cans and just barely into a 4-inch j-box.

3. Downrate: Some kitchen appliances run on it so besides begging for questions when I sell the house ("why is this kitchen breaker rated 15 Amp?"), I run the risk of tripping the switch every time I turn the garbage disposal on.

3. Another circuit: It may take longer than rewiring what I wired - at least I know the layout of my wiring already.

 

This worries me a little. Don't like it when people are talking about jamming things into a J-boxes. Can you post a picture of these lights?

Option #3 is likely your only option. You may not take anything off the kitchen small appliance circuits anyway so that is not going to work.

 

Your supposed to have two dedicated circuits small appliance receptacle circuits (20amp) per code for the kitchen. Let the experts speak up if I'm missing something there.

They require that in order to handle some heavy current draws such as toaster ovens, etc.

You need to pull the power off of another circuit. Leave those kitchen receptacle circuits alone.

good luck

 

That's the only option I see. The first 2 are not worth considering.

 

Here are the photos.

This is how the fixture fits into 4-inch J-box. It fits very snugly without any wires (it has 2 boxes that don't fit well into the round box); it's quite hard to jam both white boxes into the J-box when there's some wiring there.



There's another version of this same fixture (undistinguishable from the packaging) that fits quite well. It has only one white box and a bracket that makes it easy to separate the box from the wiring. Still it's crouded inside J-box even with that version.

You'll see on the packaging that it's advertised for use with 4-inch J-boxes:

 

That's a pain.. The 20A circuit in question is original, built in 1981. It's the dishwasher circuit. Nothing else is plugged into it besides the dishwasher, but it has 3 receptacles along countertops. There are also 3 receptacles in the "dining room" - there are no doors, so I'm not sure if that's legally a separate room, but there's a load-bearing wall in the middle of the whole 1st floor. Does anyone know if something like that is allowed, electrically speaking?

So if lighting's not allowed on the dishwasher circuit (which is a shame, these LEDs will draw less than 1Amp on full), is it generally easier/better to take power through crawlspace or the attic?

 

I am not sure that was even allowed in 1981, but it definitely doesn't meet modern codes. Having a dishwasher on the same circuit as receptacles sounds like a problem for a 20 amp circuit and even more of a problem if you drop the circuit to 15 amps. Personally, I think you need two new circuits, one for this light and one for the dishwasher and they could both be 15 amp circuits.

 

In my state in the late 70's ( a long time ago for me) we were allowed to extend a kitchen appliance circuit in to the dining area only IF , there was not a functioning door to the dining room and the extension did not exceed the maximum outlet capacity for that dedicated appliance circuit. Strange rule back then, that has now been changed to a code violation.

 

Where did you tap into the 20 amp circuit? Remove that tap-in and run the new circuit from the panel to that point to meet the new ceiling light "subcircuit".

Very often the junction boxes that come with ceiling lighting (e.g. can lights) are too small for a 12 gauge feed and a 12 gauge continuation to the next light.

 

Now that I see the box in the picture, I have seen them in the store. It does look quite crowded and you likely have done you a favor by using 14 ga wire.

You will find the dining room circuit is also going to be a 20 amp circuit and is another circuit you need to leave alone. Since it is such a small load, maybe you can tap off another lighting circuit someplace close, in the attic, or elsewhere? Sometimes electricians will run a hot to the light fixture, and then just run a switch loop to the switch. This would be a good place to catch a hot circuit from an existing lighting circuit.