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How to place LED Ceiling Lights in a camper van
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May 2, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:00
All right guys, we should be live. Welcome back to the shop. Just got back from Peace Love and Vans
0:11
and we are catching up on what we left off with on the ceiling part of John and Susan's van. So
0:18
I'm gonna hop right into it. Just letting you know, I will be re-uploading the Peace Love and Vans. I
0:24
needed to fix an audio issue in there. So, it'll be re-uploaded for this weekend, and I hope you
0:29
guys get a chance to see it. I'll put the link in the description below. But let's hop on to today's
0:35
project. So before I got too into fixing this, it's not really a problem. It's just, you know
0:42
building as usual. Typically what I want to do is when I'm putting, installing a ceiling panel
0:50
I'll typically install it initially, and then I'll go in and put my lights in later
0:55
but this back panel it's turned out to be pretty complex because we've got a
1:02
lot of things going on and this will be kind of my advice to you if you run into
1:08
the situation to make your install a little bit easier. So not only do we have
1:12
the max fan cutout, the Dometic, the Nomadic Cooling X2 opening, four LED
1:20
lights and then the cedar that we want to make sure is nice and even. We want to
1:27
put our lights in here and so right here I've got an example for you. And this
1:33
is just what I like to do. You don't have to do this but when I install the puck
1:39
lights I want them to be in the middle of the cedar strips. So you may ask
1:45
yourself well you know how the heck am I going to figure out where the center is
1:49
for my light not only on the cedar but on the panel of the layout. So what I've
1:55
done here and you might already guess what's happening is I've taken a bunch of
1:59
these cedar pieces and believe it or not we're gonna have just a hair over 17
2:06
pieces wide because they're three and a half inches and what we've done is I've
2:12
taken them and I've cut them to three inches it doesn't matter I just was
2:16
trying to save on material. And what I did is I took it and then I just laid it out. And so what
2:23
this is going to do is this is going to tell me where, now let me off just a maybe like a 16th
2:32
or a 32nd or something like that, but this is pretty much where the center lines of each of
2:39
these pieces of wood are. So what I've done is I've went ahead and cut these out and I've found my
2:45
center so just to give you guys a visual let's see if i get my current marker
2:53
and let's see i'm not sure if i can see the chat if you guys are having questions
3:34
Thank you
4:04
on my phone and I'm not wanting to use the filter. What is going on
4:34
There we go. Okay, that was pretty annoying. Okay
5:10
All right. Everything should be fixed now. So what we have here is we've got the center line
5:18
I'm just going to draw the center line right here. So this is our center line for all of our cedar pieces
5:29
and what we need to do is line these up so that they're even so all I've done is just connect them
5:37
kind of like Legos here so I've got every all of them connected and again there's going to be
5:42
about 17 for typical for transit width and then the next step I want to do is come over here
5:51
and draw a line where I know that the light's going to be so what I've already done you guys
5:57
can see here I've got a hole and this hole is uh is where the light's going to be so let me
6:04
move this up then I'm going to bring this down so you guys can see it
6:10
give me one second I have this all ready to go Okay, hopefully that doesn't look too crazy
6:34
Okay, so right here is where the hole is going to go. So I pre-cut that out
6:38
I don't typically do that. I'm just doing it for this example so I can show you how I came to this. So we know where the boards are going to be. We've got our center line marked
6:48
We came over here and this right here is where the center line of where I want to put my light is
6:56
Now the next thing is, you know, where am I going to put my light? If I move this out of the way
7:03
in a previous stream, we talked about creating a stick right here that's going to kind of map out
7:10
where you can drill into the cross member of the Ford Transit
7:15
So any place that's black, this is where I'm not going to grab onto anything
7:20
So these are all the little opening slits in the top. So in this representation, we have two areas where the roof supports are
7:36
We've got one here, and then the second one is right here
7:40
The good news is it's nowhere near our lights up here and that's a good thing
7:48
So that's where it is and then typically we safe I come back about an inch and a half
7:54
and then anything from here down would be safe. Next I've got this measurement right here and if I take this square and I'm going to
8:04
come in let's just come in two inches okay so right here this is where my
8:17
furring strip is inside the van already so this area right here I can't actually
8:24
I can't use so the space that I have to put these lights in the van are from
8:34
right here to about right here. Next you want to see what can obstruct
8:41
the way your light looks. So what's going to make it look funny if you go
8:48
to install your puck lights. So if you don't have a plan you might want to put
8:53
your light right here just so it's closer forward to this piece but you
8:59
need to make sure you take your max fan shroud and then just go ahead and lay it
9:04
into place. And you can see if I put that LED light
9:08
and again, this is just my opinion, but it kind of looks really weird right here
9:12
so close to this. So what I did is I took this
9:16
and I kind of went at an angle, and this is only, it's just a visual thing
9:22
And so what that does is that puts my light right there So now there kind of like a visual where that light goes and I think it makes it look better Now you
9:38
may say, well why don't you put the light here? Well the problem is the cross
9:42
member comes out right here and it's it'll be really tight. Plus back here
9:52
there's no room for light because we have a not only a partition but like a fridge stack
10:00
so that wouldn't work anyway so this is where i'm putting the light and then the second light
10:05
is going to go back here with the air conditioner now this is going to be painted black just like
10:13
this so this is the actual pneumatic cooling decorative plate that covers up everything
10:19
So you'll have that black, you'll have this black. And yeah, so that's the way this ceiling will look
10:32
Now the reason that I'm putting the lights in here now is because, and now all I'm doing
10:38
is just I'm running the wires and I'm taping the wires to the back of this
10:42
So the puck lights that won't actually be in there. just be a single hole drilled. Actually, let me take that back. There'll be kind of some markings
10:55
outside of this to let me know where I'm going to drill the hole. So basically what I'm doing
11:02
is I'm pre-wiring all the wires in here. So when I lift it up, they're already snaked through the
11:07
sides and I can just use my Wago connectors. And you guys have probably seen these in some other
11:14
videos but I can use these guys to connect all the lights in the back. The rear is going to be
11:23
on its own circuit and the front is going to be on a separate circuit so you can control them
11:27
independently. But yeah this is pretty much just a quick video to show you how I land the puck light
11:37
on the center of a piece of cedar. And the tools that I use to do that, we've got like a drywall
11:43
square and so all I did was find out my center line and I took that center line
11:48
just took it straight back and then when I found where my cross member was in the
11:54
back which is back here I went ahead and put the lights back here in the back so
12:06
yeah it's pretty much it for this frame just to help you guys with the ceiling
12:13
light placement. The next thing we're going to do is I'm going to flip this over, get the wires run
12:17
and then we'll pop this up in the van. And then the next live stream, we'll show you guys
12:24
what it looks like as we're gluing in the cedar ceiling. So stay tuned for the next live stream
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