I wanted to test my wiring before my reno’s were complete and was surprise to find out that my 22awg wire I purchased would not wire up my LED strip. Here’s what I purchased:
Power Supply
Wiring
I verified there was current coming from the wiring after connecting it to the power supply. I don’t have an ohm meter so was only able to test with a simple tester. To verify my theory I took some old wire from a computer power supply and was able to successfully power up the strip.
I’m a little stumped why this wire would be incompatible ?
The cable is too thin to carry 6 amps (70W / 12V) any distance without a large voltage drop due to the resistance. You are going to need two to four times the thickness depending on the distance. Calculate the wire size you need here:
Also for permanent installation there may be building code requirements for the wire type, depending on which country you live in.
you can also run multiple runs of smaller gauge wire to carry the same amount of current as a single larger conductor. it’s not 2 to 1 (ie. 2 x 28AWG does not equal the ampacity rating of a single 14 AWG conductor). Also, if the area you are in has building codes that follow the NEC (US standards) there’s a lower limit on what gauges can be doubled up.
oh wow… what a rookie mistake on my part and a huge waste of time…
Initially I was going to have two seperate circuits from the same power supply. However, knowing this it seems my runs will be too long. Looks like I’ll have to go back to the drawing board on this.
Is it feasible to use 14awg on LED stips ? After reading the article if I use 14awg I will be ok since the light strips themselves are fairly short ( 2 meters max). I’m just not sure soldering 14awg on an LED is achievable ?
For reference my longest run is approximately 5 meters and will need to power about 1 meter LED (12v).
Our kitchen is a galley layout my goal was to power both sides of the kitchen from the same power source. So I have long runs between strips but the overall length of lighting I’m using is only approx 5 meters.
You only have to run the majority of the distance in the thick wire. You can use short lengths (10cm) of thinner wire for the connection. They will not add much resistance because of the short length.