Replace underwater pool light bulb- Safe ?

Oct 21, 2006 11 Replies

There is a underwater light in my pool in a circular fixture that looks like a headlight on an old car .It has stopped working. I am told that these are low voltage and the bulb ( if that is the problem) can be changed underwater without draining the pool. Anybody have any first hand experience with this ? Thanks



I have changed a few in my time and found that they are not low voltage. That is correct about not emptying your pool. There will be one or two screws holding the whole light fixture in place. Once you unscrew these, the whole water sealed fixture can be taken out of the pool to change the bulb. There is enough wire coiled behind the fixture to enable you to take it out of the pool.

cm

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The fixture is water tight and should float if you've correctly re-installed the gasket.

Thanks to all. Couldn't remove the screws - heads are all chewed up, and I was lying on my belly, so I will have to drain out a few feet of water to get at them and extract them somehow- drill them out the head maybe, and use a vise grip on the stump. Cheers.

Possibly you have a contact, wiring, or transformer problem, and that the bulb is fine.

Check that the niche and via aren't leaking before you reassemble:

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Another possibility is using a pneumatic drill under water.

bud--

I don't know how you can do this underwater unless you have a pneumatic tool, but back in my aviation maintenance days, we'd take a circular dremel tool to a buggered up screw head and cut a slot in it, then use a slotted screwdriver to get the screw out. It worked on airplanes; it might work for you.

It could be 12V light but with a high amperage. Think of you car battery can 24V. You can get a pretty nasty jolt from its.

Last summer I had a similar problem after a lot of testing I found out that a relay connected to the lamp was malfunctioning and the lamp itself was OK. I had to go thought a lot of wires before finding that out.

The 'reamed out screw head" turned out to be a perfectly good ss hex/allen key bolt. The whole unit is held on with 2 tabs at the bottom and the one hex screw at the top.

The bulb is low voltage - cant read it but its 2 digits and the first is a 1 so its probably 12 volts, and it looks like 100 watts. The gasket had failed and the enclosure was full of water.

The whole fixture is very primitive and looks like it was designed about 50 years ago. I might upgrade the whole thing depending on the cost.

Thanks to all.

A whole new fixture here in AZ is only around $250.00 - $300.00.

cm

Make sure you can pull the cord out of the raceway. The new lamp comes with a new cord and the only splice has to be in the J box away from the pool. They are all failrly primitive and they do not all fit in every niche.

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