Installing overhead lights in prewar ceiling

I was wondering the same for a ceiling fan. Same situation: pre-war beamed ceiling. Seems like it would be a lot of work.

Check your building's alteration agreement to find out whether you can channel into the ceiling. E.g., at this one they apparently couldn't, so had to put in a fake beam: http://img.streeteasy.com/nyc/image/98/7866098.jpg

Most buildings do not let you chop into a concrete slab. Are you talking about just one light fixture?

Yes, Primer05 - or 2. Maybe one in the living room, one in the bedroom. This is in an apartment we're probably going to bid on.
The only overhead light that isn't track lighting is in the foyer.

We recently got new 10 overhead electrical boxes in the apartment with brick ceilings. $400 per box including patching the channels. For smaller job, the cost can be double per box. Also, depend on how far they have to channel.

I will probably run into a board member in a week, so I will try to remember to ask her, but I'm not sure that they'll let you do this in your target building. As NWT points out, you might want to more formally ask the seller.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Thanks. Yes, good advice to ask for the alterations agreement.
Mercer, any clue how brick compares to plaster?

I got ahold of the alterations agreement. I know nothing about structure; can someone tell me what this means:

"No electric wiring or boxes, etc., may be chopped into the slab at the floor or
the ceiling nor into the demising walls."

Is "the slab" the whole ceiling?

Since your ceiling has beams, you can always create fake "cross beams" into which you set recessed lights. The cross beams create a coffered ceiling. A friend of mine did, and it looked beautiful, but you should make sure the room is large enough to support such a look.

Yes, ths slab is the entire ceiling and entire floor.

If you want to install lighting or a ceiling fan, it can be done without running the wires above the ceiling. I had two ceiling fans installed and some track lighting installed and the wires were run from the switches on the walls (behind the drywall) up to the ceiling. When the wires get to the ceiling, they come out of the wall and run on the outside of the ceiling to either the track or the ceiling fan and have a small cover that goes over the wires. If you paint the cover the same color as your ceiling, it is really not noticeable. Not quite as nice as running the wires above the ceiling, but if there is no space above the ceiling, it is the best you can do (unless you want to drop the ceiling which is expensive and takes away from your room height). As for price, I had track lighting (3 tracks connected in a U shape) installed in my living room, a piece of track lighting and a ceiling fan installed in the bedroom and a ceiling fan in my home office and the total cost (with the ceiling fans, tracks and lights) was around $4500.

FWIW, having the ceiling fans installed was a great idea. I got fans that also have lights so you had some light to the room. Also, when the weather is nice, you can have the windows open and get a great breeze and can forego the A/C.

Heisenberg,

What downtown is talking about is wire molding which most people do not care for. What the alteration agreement is telling you is that you cannot chop the ceiling at all, thats the reason the last person had track lighting. This is very common in NYC. I would say I have been able to chop ceilings in two apts. out of hundreds of renovations. You have several choices

1. wall sconces (you are allowed to chop the walls
2. Floor lamps
3. Track lighting
4. Build soffits and install junction boxes

We have the same situation but our walls are all slab and cannot be compromised without dealing with the board etc. We have always installed recessed lighting and really want a bright apartment. Would anyone have a referral of an electrician or supplier that has insight into these issues and may have a track system or other idea that doesnt look unsightly ??

alanb - did you find someone? Primer05 list is excellent.

Reviving this thread because I have the same question.

We just bought an apartment in a pre-war, concrete slab floor building. There are some beams in the ceiling. The building's raw height is 10', but the previous owner had dropped ceiling so the ceiling height is about 8.5', going to 8' under some beams.

We want to claim as much ceiling height as possible and remove all dropped ceiling. Our building does not allow trenching concrete slabs. If we give up on having ceiling fixtures, how will the ceiling be finished? Our architect told us that we can't just glue drywall onto the concrete, and some "black iron" structure will need to be mounted to the ceiling, which will take away 6"-9" of height anyway. This sounds very alarming and confusing to me. Also, doesn't it mean everyone will get overhead lighting for free if this is required?

Does anyone has experience with this?

If i could make a suggestion, they make new recessed lights now that only require you to drop your ceiling 2". If you want to email me I can send you photos of what it looks like. primerenovations@mac.com

Primer, thanks for your help. The problem is that our architect said that if we drop the ceiling at all, it will have to be at least 6" using a special type of bracket, due to some regulation in New York City, something called "black iron". This is extremely confusing to me. I googled it but it seems to only apply to office buildings..?

If the goal is to able to have ceiling fixtures like a chandelier installed, how much does the ceiling need to be dropped?

If you use the Google search term "collapse of burning buildings black iron" you'll get a section of the Vincent Dunn book that explains why black iron is NYC fire code -- it sounds like basically the suspension of a dropped ceiling needs to be strong enough to support a ceiling that is wet down in the course of firefighting.

Others would know more than me, but it might be one of those things where that's actually been the code for years, and now DoB is focused on enforcing it.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Thank you Ali. So then my question is, is a soffit with recessed lights around the perimeter of a room not considered as suspended ceiling? Otherwise it can't be just 2" deep. Or is it installed on top of suspended ceiling?

From talking to our architect, to have maximum ceiling height we'll need to skim coat and paint concrete ceiling, and any ceiling fixture needs to have surface-mount conduit and electrical box. That doesn't sound attractive either :(

I have similar situation - coop ceiling, needs lights, no channeling into the slab.

My architect came up with a nice plan for this - thin LED lighting strips (only half and inch thick, look good), embedded into sheetrock: "framed as required by building code; 7/8” hat channels, 18 gauge, anchored to slab using screws designed for masonry; half inch firecode gypsum board.".

The thought was that this would not require permits... gave it to the building, building architect says dropped ceilings, needs DOB permits. I haven't gone down that route yet, would be interesting to know whether this is going to be fine with a permit, or it's going to be rejected.

Anyway, the idea was for this whole installation to be like 1-2 inches, flush with the concrete ceiling and without space, and yet still it's considered as "dropping" the ceiling, so it seems like there's not much you can get away with at all here.

Bryantpark, please let me know how it turns out. Are you saying that your building architect didn't reject the plan, just deferred to DoB on this matter?

bryant, If you ask, they always put you through the trouble. If I were to do what you are doing, I would not even ask. One could technically do it myself as a diy project.

@FireDragon: Yes, exactly. I haven't proceeded to submit it to the DoB yet, as I don't have a feel for whether getting a permit for this (and the other changes) is going to be a straightforward formality, or the start of endless toing and froing.

@300_mercer: Words of wisdom, unfortunately. In my case, it was part of a bigger project (bathroom replacement) so the thought was to get everything done at once, above-board, but perhaps that was naive.

Fastening hat channel to your concrete ceiling, which is your upstairs neighbor's floor unless you're on top, is going to be a noisy process. Literally hundreds of holes with a drill for any decent sized area. There's no way you would have gotten that done on the down low.

I am not an architect, nor a code expert, but as I understand it the "black iron" refers to a manner of installing suspension ceilings. If you were simply attaching channel to the concrete ceiling and drywall, I don't see why that would qualify as a suspension ceiling. But, there is not enough depth in that channel space to install a standard line voltage electric box, as opposed to one of the low voltage solutions described above. I have no idea if the electric code would let you run conduit through that channel space to a shallow "pancake box" to hold a chandelier -- I rather doubt it. Prior to my apartment being renovated, the previous owners had created additional, hollow drywall beams covered in thinset to mimic the real ones to hold lighting and electrical, and also artificially widened a few beams to run electric.

There is low-voltage very flat wire that is supposed to be able to be hidden under the paint. The company said it was working on UL approval for a 120v version in 2008. It looks like an interesting option for these situations but I have no experience with it.

http://www.nexwire.com/installation/lighting.html
http://www.nexwire.com/products/lighting.html

You dont necessary had etc use the black iron, and the lighting i am talking about is ultra thin so you only need 2 inches

Yes

@FireDragon, I have the same question/issue as you did many years ago - I would like to get rid of the recessed light and drop ceiling to get more ceiling height. Mine is also a prewar building. How was your process and final outcome?