lamps blowing any ideas???

[sima24]

Changed a customers lights a while back from old spots to new roses throughout the house. Had a call yesterday to say they still keep blowing any ideas? All connections are good, all tested. I know they had cheap 100w lamps in to begin with which i advised changing. Anything else to try other than asking them to use decent lamps insted of tesco value?

 

[markc123]

You sometimes can get bad batches of gear, i just hope its not the lampholders of the roses in ure sake.

Bad lamps major possibility, can get cheap crap nowadays and im seeing more and more problems with just dodgy lamps...then ure task is to convince the customer that the lamps theyre using are useless, because they never believe you.

Check for signs of arching in the lampholders though. Or a loose connectiion in switches....if the lamp flickers on and off theyll blow...especially if theyre cheap

 

[Rockingit]

UNLIKELY - but.... have you checked for over voltage?

 

[wade88]

I had same problem with a customer last year. Full lighting re-wire, spots throughout house, GU10's by request, but they were going through 10's of the buggers each month. Circuitry was fine and tested out great, hard to believe it was down to perpetual bad batches, came to the conclusion that the voltage entering the house was fluxuating pretty wildy and the house would have benefited from a voltage regulator fitted to calm it down a bit.

The surges and spikes in voltage i believe were causing the bulbs to blow out. "dirty" voltage i think its referred to.

 

[Rockingit]

"dirty" voltage i think its referred to.

I thought that was a reference to the use of C Cells by lady sparks?

 

[sima24]

Thanks, going back later so going to start with ensuring they use decent lamps and see if that cures the problem. I was wondering about fluxating voltages as im sure that could also be a problem. Anyway around that apart from a voltage rectifyer?

 

[gnuuser]

one possibility could be an intermittant neutral short
when wiring warms up its possible expansion is moving it a bit
(one customer had lights keep blowing in a socket and we found the problem 2 junction boxes away from it)
but overvoltage can also do this (its best to monitor it with an o-scope during peak usage hours to get a better idea)
if overvoltage is the problem then a line conditioner may be needed

 

[grantr37]

if it's standard incandescent lamps (100W ?) have you looked at the safety fuse inside the internal Glass envelope , the smaller Glass capsule that the 2 conductors go through and come out to the tungsten filament.....if there is no wire in there/little beads of black fried metal that's gone molten, then that's the internal safety fuse gone....which is over voltage....often the lamp will go "plink" and the breaker will trip at the same time putting all the other lights off.....then its a case of a new lamp/bulb and resetting the breaker.......but it happens again soon after....
This is an issue caused by the power company, usually in conjunction with Electrical work that they are carrying out, or if there are wind turbines or small hydro nearby that are newly built....and they don't care a bit...they usually quietly sort it out behind closed doors...

Good Quality CF lamps will stand up to this a bit better, but they will wear out quicker, and if not changed about once a year, when they do fail, they will blow open and hit the floor in bits....


anything from about 255Volts upwards (even for 2 or 3 seconds)will blow out a light almost immediately, this will in turn take out the breaker and save the other lamps, on older wiring with fused consumer units, the first lamp in the circuit nearest the board in terms of connection would usually have taken the hit and popped, with the surge being over and done with and the energy being spent making your lamp/bulb into a camera flash...it just takes a few hundred mA extra..


have you ever noticed that as well as a brown out dimming the lights down for quite a duration (tree touching lines on supply to your substation/pole mounted transformer etc) sometimes the lights would go up by about 30% brightness? that's when you get 10 or 15 Volts extra, normally during night time changeovers/ transformer boosts by the power company...

Unintentional surges happen with problems on the HV system miles down the road and the first thing to go is the lights, closely followed by mobile phone chargers...