forestcreature
DIY
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I have several rooms of downlight fittings with non-dimmable 5W GU10 mains AC LED bulbs, making about 150W total. They run off a single 1.5mm twin and earth from the consumer unit with no dimmers, all installed method A. Permanent lives at each switch, with a radial circuit off that to make a room's string. Please tell me if that doesn't make sense---my sparky started the install and for various reasons I finished installing several rooms. A few of the switches+circuits are supplied by a junction box in the attic for convenience.
At first everything worked well. Then after a few weeks or months, individual bulbs would light to a partial glow, and flicker intermittently. Sometimes it would be a steady glow with just a flash every few minutes. After switching the lights off, the unaffected bulbs would go dark normally, but the affected bulbs would slowly fade as if driven by a discharging capacitor. I took the PCB out of a few of them but didn't see anything obviously amiss (didn't test individual components though). Over time, almost all of the bulbs developed this problem.
We ascribed it to a bad batch of cheap ebay bulbs and replaced them with some from a high street supplier. Now these are slowly beginning to go in the same fashion.
Any ideas, before I start testing everything?
At first everything worked well. Then after a few weeks or months, individual bulbs would light to a partial glow, and flicker intermittently. Sometimes it would be a steady glow with just a flash every few minutes. After switching the lights off, the unaffected bulbs would go dark normally, but the affected bulbs would slowly fade as if driven by a discharging capacitor. I took the PCB out of a few of them but didn't see anything obviously amiss (didn't test individual components though). Over time, almost all of the bulbs developed this problem.
We ascribed it to a bad batch of cheap ebay bulbs and replaced them with some from a high street supplier. Now these are slowly beginning to go in the same fashion.
Any ideas, before I start testing everything?
- TL;DR
- Conventionally (?) installed non-dimming LED GU10 downlights gradually start to glow on reduced power, flicker occasionally, gradually affecting more and more bulbs. Happened to batches from two different suppliers.
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