Hi, I'm in the process of remodeling my kitchen and I'm going to use pendant lighting mixed with led up/down lighting on the cabinets to provide all light. My plan is to run a new circuit for the lights. I want all the lights to be on a dimmable switch but I have the feeling this might be difficult since I'm going to use all LEDs and they will require a DC power via an AC/DC transformer. The kitchen isn't large so wiring is not a problem. My question is, would it be better to go with one large transformer and run that to a PWM dimmer switch and then run all the wires w/ DC to the lights or use a few small transformers with a standard AC dimmer switch? Working with LEDs in the past it seems as if I need digital PWM to dim the lights properly. What are your thoughts?




Thank you

 

DC LEDs? Really? That seems strange.

 

LED's are dc devices. Some fixtures take a/c in but they convert it to dc internally.
Myself I would go the route of one large transformer but how large are we talking ? You should add up the current demand of all your lighting fixtures as that will also dictate transformer sizing.

 

Hmm... shows what I know, thanks for the lesson.

 

Well... Roughly, above cabinet up lighting, color changing leds 4A max full load (16ft), under cabinet down lighting white leds 2A (16ft), pendant lights probably another 2A at the most, so at MOST probably 10A but that seems unrealistic and probably closer to 8A and in reality probably even less. I guess I could always do 2 dimmers off of one transformer... one for the ambient cabinet lighting and one for the pendant/direct/room lighting. Either way, thinking about it here and asking you I think I'll just run the low voltage wiring for DC power throughout the kitchen for the lights.

I've noticed with some of the wall plate switches they only support dimming ~100W max though one of these installed on a face plate (http://goo.gl/JjHqU) should be able to control the entire lighting of the system and I could even add another if I want specific controls for say pendants vs ambient...

Placement, another question, the transformer should probably be located in a cabinet or accessible location, NOT in the wall correct? I suppose it's better to be plugged into an outlet rather than hardwired too or is this an incorrect assumption?

 

The transformer can be hardwired if the one you buy is made to accept that. It can be inside a wall behind an access panel, or it can be in a cabinet or other accessible location.

 

Where and how are you planning to mount this control? If it's the one pictured in your link, I see a 4-wire terminal block exposed at the bottom of it. That wiring block needs to be inside an enclosure.

 

Well, ideally i'd like to take the case off and mount it in one half of a 2-gang enclosure. Is that not good enough or are you thinking something different? I want to be able to control brightness from one switch to all my kitchen lights and then each light could also be dimmed on their own (if I decide that's necessary). The lights above the cabinet have their own controller to say what color the light is as well as a dimmer on that. Is this getting to be too much? I really just want total control over my lights in my small kitchen

 

That should be fine.

No, not too much at all. I was just concerned about where that connection block would be.