Re: Lights in my staircase coming on (and sometimes off) without human intervention

[tony sayer]

In article , Duncan Wood scribeth thus

> >> So the electrician came yesterday and looked in the switches and did not >> find anything. Then he said that it's probably the bulb, as it is a low >> energy bulb, they often come on with human intervention. Really?? So he >> changed the bulb to an old one. That was his explanation! > >Still bet there's a nail in the cable, energy efficient bulbs come on at a >far far lower leakage current than tungstens so you can mask the problem >with one.

Wonder what the capacitance of a lump of twin 1.0/1.5 mill cable is and remember theres an earth conductor which might/might not be connected.

Course if there was an RCD then that if leaking that much would trip. Course they might have wired the place in single conductors which wouldn't cause that Capactive effect to keep the light on so seems rather odd..

x-posted to uk.d-i-y for comment.

Anyone heard of this?, seems a low energy landing light is coming on at random, sparks thinks that low energy bulbs need sod all power to light assumed to be the capacitance on the switch connecting cable is enough to keep it on?....

[Jethro_uk]

maybe a diy exorcism is needed ?

[Martin Brown]

How "On" are the OP's lights when they are supposed to be off?

A modern high power LED will visibly glow with under 10uA of leakage current flowing through it - sometimes even an order of magnitude less. They keep on getting ever more efficient as time progresses.

However, it needs 12W or so at 240v = 50mA for full brightness. I would be pretty worried if I had that sort of leakage current in a circuit.

[Duncan Wood]

Only if it was leaking to earth, and more tham 30mA, you get light out of an energ saving bulb at less than that.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 14:06:21 on Thu, 22 Aug

2013, tony sayer remarked:

It doesn't matter, it's not his house and he's not allowed to fiddle with the electrics. It's more about the politics of getting the estate agent to spend the landlord's money sorting it out.

[spuorgelgoog]

I can't see the original post, but there was a thread (possibly in another place) where it was communal staircase lights activated by a microwave occu pancy detector, and the microwave detector could 'see' through solid doors and was being activated by people inside their flats.

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

That needs an answer.

CFLs will flash with moderate brightness if the live isn't switched but the neutral is. There can be a bit of "after glow" for a minute or two after been switched off.

[Brian Gaff]

Sounds unlikely unless its one of them fancy touch switches.

Brian

[tony sayer]

In article , Roland Perry scribeth thus

Nooo .... this is a more scientific question now as to just how that can happen not how much the LL is going to spend on inept sparks;!..

[tony sayer]

Here....

I guess everyone would either think of a bad connection or of a ghost as possible reasons.

The thing is we have been living here for over a year, and it has never happened before.

The first time we saw it happen was maybe a month ago, we were sleeping on the futon downstairs as the upstairs was too hot. We switched all lights off, and as we were about to go to sleep, noticed that the staircase light was on. We thought it was weird as the house was in total darkness before.

Until tonight, I was having a shower downstairs and my wife was reading in bed. I had switched off all the lights downstairs on my way to the bathroom. While I was in the shower, the light switched itself on. Then went off after 5 minutes, on again briefly, off and then stayed on. It's only when I went back to the bedroom that my wife asked me if I had been playing with the switch... And explained what had happened. Hmmm.

We live in Coton, in a new build (c. 1999) so not really sure what is wrong. May just ask the agency tomorrow.

[ARWadsworth]

But is the OP allowed to tell the electrician how to solve the problem?

All the electrician needs to do is install a

between the switched live and neutral.

[ARWadsworth]

And the OP then received two replies suggesting that it was low energy lamps that were to blame and he said that was not the case as he was using an incandescent bulb!

Six days later he then posted "So the electrician came yesterday and looked in the switches and did not find anything. Then he said that it's probably the bulb, as it is a low energy bulb"