What is Quickwire?
Quickwire is a Ltd company from Berkshire. Under the name of Flex Connectors, they have been inventing lighting connection and control systems for 18 years and it has to be said, they are pretty good at it.
Quickwire is the latest in a bunch of products that make wiring your lights as simple as it can possibly be!
Quickwire – The revolutionary new junction box
How does the Quickwire system work?
Wiring lights is a little tricky sometimes. In it’s simplest form a light needs a switch. The switch needs to interrupt the live feed to the light in order to turn it on and off. Sounds simple, right?
However, DIY Doctor and it’s electrical forum, it testament to the fact that putting a new light anywhere in a house, or extending a lighting circuit to add more lights, can be the most complex thing imaginable to a huge number of people, including some electricians!
To read some of the contributions one would think the light was being wired in a jungle of cables
Quickwire will help to keep all of your wiring work neat and tidy
Quickwire lighting is so much easier: The system comes in two parts:
Quickwire Switch and Load Junction Box
For any light to work properly in needs a switch and this switch, in almost all circumstances, needs to interrupt a live feed from the mains.
This can be via other lights, a fused spur or, in the case of the first light on a circuit, the consumer unit itself.
The Quickwire junction box
Usually this interruption is done via a standard junction box or a ceiling rose. Both, as you can see below, can be a little fiddly.
Standard junction boxes and ceiling roses can be very fiddly to connect up, especially in tight spaces!
The Quickwire system of fitting a switch into a lighting circuit is however, simplicity itself.
Rather than take the power feed to a junction box or ceiling rose and then independently connect the switch wire and the wire to the light to the same, or different terminals, the Quickwire Switch and Load junction box (easily identified from the Splitter as it is white) has all of the connections prewired for you.
You just literally “plug” the power feed wire into the power inlet, the switch cable into the switch (Ls) inlet and the lighting cable into the Load (L) inlet.
It takes about 30 seconds (including trimming the cable with the Quickwire Wire Strippers) and it is as safe as it could possibly be.
The spare power terminal is then used to feed the power to the next room or switched light
The Quickwire Splitter box
The Quickwire Splitter box
Extra lights can easily be added by using the Quickwire splitter box
If you want to add an extra, or more than one extra lights to your lighting circuit, the Quickwire Splitter (the grey box) is the ideal pre wired junction box.
Simply remove one light, push the cable into the Splitter, then push in up to three more light cables. Again it takes seconds.
The video above and indeed the Quickwire website explains all very simply.
Extra lights can easily be added using the Quickwire splitter boz
On Site Test of the Quickwire Switch and Load Junction box and the Quickwire Splitter box
As the video shows, we took the Quickwire kit to our own yard where we are building some more offices.
Even taking into account the time spent setting up the video and chatting an intro and explanations, the whole wiring process took half the time it would take using junction boxes and ceiling roses.
The first thing we noticed was how easy it was to trim the cable to exactly the right length using the Quickwire strippers.
The lighting cable is inserted into the cutters to the 22mm mark and the handles depressed. Hey Presto the sheathing comes off.
Do the same thing again and the wire insulation comes off. Both live and neutral, both in one go!
The Quickwire, wire stripping system
Once the cable and wires have been stripped to the correct length, the ends are pushed into the Quickwire Junction Box or Splitter box.
No need to pull the wires apart, the box is set to take the cable just as it is. It’s brilliant and there is no need to sleeve the earth; something that takes quite a bit of time
The cable goes into the junction box with a little push. An audible click assures you it is in there properly but just to be sure you can see (or should be able to see if you have pushed the wires in far enough) the ends of the cable through a little inspection window on the side of the unit.
Inserting stripped wires into the Quickwire junction box and clipping them up
The video explains this process much more easily than this page can but it really is so simple it feels like cheating!
We had the lights wired in our new packing room in absolutely no time at all and the only tool we needed was the Quickwire strippers.
There is no need for an array of screwdrivers and no side cutters are required either for cable or earth sleeving.
Fitting the light to the Quickwire system
The Quickwire system really comes into its own when fitting an after-market light fitting. In simple parlance, a light fitting which will replace an existing one.
Modern lights can be tricky to wire up
Usually these new fittings are contemporary and swishy lights to replace an ordinary pendant and, in many cases are extremely difficult to fit because half the ceiling has to come down to get all the wires connected in giant connecting blocks.
With Quickwire, all you need, as the video shows, is a 32mm hole to hide everything.
New wire run from Quickwire junction box ready for new light
DIY Doctor verdict on the Quickwire Junction Box and Quickwire Splitter
Brilliant! We cannot be clearer than that. The system is so simple to use.
It is logical, compact and takes all of the difficulty out of adding or installing lighting in the home.
This genuinely is a serious piece of kit that will make Electricians, and Home Improvers lives a great deal easier. Hats off to Quickwire !
The Doctor’s Rating
Reviewed by: Mike Edwards
(5 out of 5 stars)
Get This Product Now
DIY Doctor Ltd, 
0845 6342 179
