Track Lighting Installation for Dummies

track lighting

By our uncertain measure, it's been several months (four, to be precise) since the last time we took aim at one of the miscreants who wrote for WhoWhatWhereWhyHow.com, or whatever the original name of Catalogs.com was. Since that day, we see, C.c has... disintegrated, sort of. The company appears to have sold off all its "info," as they call it, to some blogger running Wordpress (ptui!). That kind soul has changed the author name on (almost) every post to "user," except for the ones credited to "admin." They can try, but we figured it out anyway: M. Dee Dubroff is the one responsible for "How to Install Track Lighting."

Like just about everything else we've seen from the keyboard of Dubroff (aka Marjorie Dorfman), this content is basically harmless. It's also, like everything else we've seen from Dubroff, basically useless. Let's see what she says.

• First, there's her daffynition of the placement of track lighting: "...you can easily attach individual lights anywhere along a long line that can run down either a wall or a ceiling. " – The meaning of running "down... a ceiling," sadly, escapes us – especially when juxtaposed against "down... a wall."
• As for prepping the outlet box, Dee says of the existing wires, "If they are badly oxidized, strip them about ? inch [sic - not Dee's fault...] of insulation using a wire stripper." – Copper wire oxidized? You have a more serious problem that stripping wires! 
• Of making the connections, this self-declared expert says, "Always follow the manufacturer?s [sic] suggestions. Do not, I repeat, do not get creative with the different colored wires or you may find yourself looking for a new house with new wires to connect sooner than you ever would have expected!" – Actually, Dee, you can hook some types of lights up backwards; they don't care which direction the current flows. If you really mess up, you'll just trip a circuit breaker, not burn the house down.
• More on wires: "When installing track lighting, make sure to connect like-colored wires together. The green or bare ground wire attaches to the grounding terminal on the track or cover plate." – It's always a treat to read wiring guides written by people who've never seen a 3-way circuit. What about the red wire, Dee?
• And last but not least, we love this high-quality information: "There is a wire connector that supplies power to the rest of the track. It is easily recognizable as a small length of track with wires coming out of the top and wire connectors on the end of it." – WTF are these "wire connectors"?

And there you have it: do-it-yourself advice from someone who's never done-it-herself; precisely the reason M. Dee is collecting yet another Dumbass of the Day award! And we didn't even give her any crap about not mentioning running a line to a new box!

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DDIY - LIGHTING