Flickering LED bulkhesd lights

[Chris Hogg]

I have four LED lights in the loft, Megaman F50500SM, 10.5W,

. They are arranged on two spurs coming from a single switch, two lights on each spur, in parallel.

A few minutes after I switch the lights on, one of the lights starts to flicker. OK, I thought, so it's faulty, I'll replace it when I get a round tuit. But a minute or two after the first light starts to flicker, the second one on that spur also starts flickering. The two lights on the other spur remain steady.

Odd, I thought. Why should the second light on that spur start to flicker, but not the lights on the other spur. What does it tell me about what I need to change or fix? Is it that the connection in the switch to that spur isn't perfect? Suggestions, please.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

What happens if you swap the bulbs over between spurs? I guess you can have dodgy connections somewhere, but it has to be perhaps common to that spur. No little rodents nibbling the cables..grin? Brian

[Martin Brown]

My money would be on a loose connection somewhere although I am at a loss to explain why one should start noisy and the other become noisy.

It could just be coincidence and a bad batch and you happen to have two good ones on the same spur and two bad ones on the other.

Swapping one bulb over would test it.

[Dave Liquorice]

Were these four fittings all bought at the same time? I'd go with a poor quality batch or maybe the bulbs not properly fitted, particulary if screw rather than bayonet.

Flickering from an iffy connection would affect everything down stream of it. If the first to flicker is at the end of the spur it could be in the first fitting and that one starts to flicker as heating in the terminal alters the contact of the other supply wire. Doesn't have to be in the live, could be in the neutral.

As others I'd swap bulbs about and check the wiring/bulb fit in the process. Most likely is dodgey bulbs, assuming you are "competent" and did the install properly (still need to check though it's easy to get distracted). If a "profesional" did it definately check it...

[John]

"Dave Liquorice" [e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Not much heating in an LED feed - I have a problem with a switch where the terminal screw had merely pushed th econductor to one side.

[Chris Hogg]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, a bad connection was my first thought, but I wanted to canvas the views here. The lights were all installed at the same time and not by me, so could be a faulty batch. Also, they were done 'professionally' by an electrician who managed to get the earth and neutral connections reversed on the bathroom radiant heater, and swore it was a faulty heater when it kept tripping the RCBO (I even asked him if he'd checked the wiring: 'yes' he said!), so with that degree of competence, quite possibly an installation fault. There are no 'bulbs' as such, but when the circular translucent cover is removed, it reveals a flat plate covered in an array of little LED emitters. I think it would be simpler to swap the whole unit rather than trying to extract that plate.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

I guess the fault could be excessive current drain intermittently, but one would suppose this might actually trigger device death fairly fast. Brian

[ARW]

A loose neutral "might" cause that problem.