18 Apr Seal and Install LED Inserts & Recessed Lights
See the best practice for disassembling and installing new LED inserts into a home’s building envelope. Eric takes you step by step, from pulling out the trim to flipping the switch.
We’re up here on a ladder and I’m going to start taking apart this recessed can light.
First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take out the lamp. Make sure you guys are wearing gloves when you’re removing lamps, for obvious reasons; you don’t want to burn yourself on an incandescent lamp or something like that. So we’ll take the lamp out and the first thing you’re going to do is pop the trim down.
Every can light is a little bit different. This one actually comes out as a whole unit. You’re just going to slide this down, and you just have to figure out your method of disassembly. Every can light’s a little bit different. In this particular case, the electrical socket is friction-fitted into the top here through a couple of clips — some spring loaded clips right there. So we’re going to remove the electrical porcelain socket and we’re going to screw our LED insert into this same socket.
So we’re done with this part and I’m going to go get my LED.
I’m back with my LED-insert and I’m going to show you a couple things about the anatomy of this thing real quick. So we’ve got spring loaded clips and these are going to get set inside a channel in the can housing that’s going to be the most difficult part of this installation which isn’t real difficult at all. You’re going to need to squeeze these and insert those into the channel, but before we do that, we’ve got a pigtail for the electrical socket. This is going to clip into our LED lens. So what we’ll do is we’ll screw this into the original socket and then just clip this together. You can see we’ve got light. We’ll unclip it for the purpose of getting it installed the rest of the way here. So we’re going to squeeze these clips and insert them into the channel on each side.
So our clips are in at this point so we have a couple steps left. At this point, we’ve got a couple things we need to do. I need to connect the clips here and that’s going to connect connect power. I’m going to do that last because that’s going to turn this light on and make it hard for you guys to see what I’m doing here, but the last step that we need to do to finish air-sealing this can light is apply a good caulk sealant to get to the actual lens and the ceiling.
