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Just bought a house and took out old ugly garage-looking lights from the kitchen (long bulb in a frame with thin plastic covers), and cut some holes to put in 4 slim recessed LED lights. There are two switches controlling these lights, but I believe they’re connected in the wall because there’s only one source coming into the kitchen lights.

The problem is light number 4 is not turning on, and has a slow flicker. First three lights work fine.

I connected them the only way I expected lights to be connected in a line (hot, neutral and ground go from source, to light 1, to light 2, to light 3, and terminate at light 4).

It is possible the wires aren’t tight. These LED lights use a little plastic piece where you insert the wires, rather than twisting them together. However at light 3, I clipped off the plastic piece for neutral, stripped and Then twisted them in a nut because they kept slipping out.

Perhaps I need to look at hot wires in light 3? Clip the plastic piece, strip and twist them All together to ensure a tight connection?

Do I wire them in a ‘serial’ method where the neutral from source goes to light 4? Hot goes to light 1, then connect from 1-4 from neutral to hot, and light 4’s neutral connects with the source neutral?

Anything else to check?

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  • What make and model are the LED fixtures in question? – ThreePhaseEel Sep 21 '20 at 11:38
  • Welcome to Home Improvement. You'll find that you need a 2nd blank line when typing to get the output rendered with the line breaks you intended. – FreeMan Sep 21 '20 at 12:44
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    You need to stop right now. For your own safety. It appears you didn't even read the instructions that came with the new fixture, nor do you understand parallel vs. serial. – Carl Witthoft Sep 21 '20 at 12:51
  • Halo white recessed light from Lowe’s. Model number HLB6099FS1EMWR – Colin Mergens Sep 21 '20 at 14:55
  • Carl, could you help explain the difference? I need lights that work. – Colin Mergens Sep 21 '20 at 14:58
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Of late, the big-box stores have brought in quite a sea of cheap imported crud. It's not near as bad as the awful imported crud found on the flea markets of eBay and Amazon Marketplace (anything that isn't "sold by: Amazon.com"). Things from Lowes are certified by Nationally Recognized Testing Lab such as UL or ETL... so they won't kill you from toxic smoke or something equally avoidable. That says nothing about quality, and it might just be a bum light. The surest way to tell is swap the relevant pieces with the next lamp over.

I agree those push connectors are dodgy as a rule. Whenever you get "free" stuff like that, feel totally empowered to replace it with a quality item you feel comfortable with.

You are correct that the problem could be at light #3 in the chain, and I'd pull those out of the connector and put them on a wire nut.

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  • I did swap the light (but not the junction box) from light 4 with light 3 and both worked at light 3. – Colin Mergens Sep 21 '20 at 17:54
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Long shot, but I'll add my experience: is there anything above these lights that could be wet?

We had one flickering LED light in our kitchen. All the other lights, replaced at the same time, were fine. A little while later we noticed that the second floor bathtub (directly above the kitchen) had a small leak, which was letting water into the wall, which then traveled into the kitchen ceiling. (How fun!)

Ever since re-caulking the bathtub a few months ago, the light has not flickered even once. I believe the moisture was disrupting the current to that light.

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