New wall light switch: spotlights keep blowing

Feb 08, 2005 3 Replies
B

I changed the wall light switch a couple of days ago. It operates a spotlight with 3 x mains 40W reflector bulbs. Although the wires are coded using the old colors (red, black etc.) everything seemed to go well and it seemed to be a simple swap out of an exisiting unit.



But since changing the wall light switch, two of the spotlights have blown as I switched on. One rather noisily this morning.



Coincidence or duff wiring? I plan to re-examine the wiring. Trouble is, its dark when I get back from work, so I need the lights on!



Bruce



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J

Could be coincidence, I have found that mains reflector bulbs can be remarkably consistent in terms of life, and hence it is not unusual to have bulbs failing within days or even hours of each other if they are nearing the end of their life. How long had these bulbs been in use?

We had a long thread about this some time ago...

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you ignore the irate American version of IMM insisting that we are all pseudo scientific numpties, the general conclusion was that with a poor switch you can reduce the life on ordinary filament bulbs, more so with halogens. With soft start you can improve the life of ordinary filament bulbs a bit and dramatically (i.e. double) that of halogens.

You can rest assured however that there is very little you could have done with the wiring that would cause a bulb failure (other than the "does not work at all" type ;-)

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B

I will replace and see if they fail again. I'll also re-check my wiring when there is some day light to work by.

Bruce

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