pot light troubles


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Old 03-23-16, 10:39 AM
C
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pot light troubles

We moved into a new place, and the basement was finished. It looked really nice with lots of pot lights, but soon, they started burning out faster than I could replace them. They are the halogen ones, and should last longer than a couple weeks I would think. I checked the board and whoever had finished the basement hadn''t added any new breakers, they just doubled up the line going into a couple of the circuits. I added 4 new breakers, and got it wired up properly and thought this would solve the problem, but the bulbs still burn out regularly. Another funny thing that's going on is sometimes one that's been "burned out" for weeks will come back on if somebody jumps hard on the floor above it. So maybe a loose wire, but I wouldn't think they'd be loose in over 20 pots. What's going on here? I know I may need to call an electrician, but I can do most wiring work, and if there's an easy fix, I'm all ears to hear it.

Chris
 
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Old 03-23-16, 01:08 PM
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A few thoughts: are the pots over-lamped (too high wattage bulbs) and do they have the correct type of lamp? This can cause the thermal cut-out switch to activate which will turn off the lamp or sometimes cause it to blink. The lamp isn't actually burned out in this case and could explain the lights coming back on.

Is there flex in the floor or is there a lot of vibration transferring through the upper floor? For example kids jumping around and playing or a laundry machine on spin cycle? The shaking might be causing premature failure of the lamps. You could try either hard service lamps or 130V rated lamps which are more "heavy duty".

A loose wire is possible, but this should be very evident as flickering in the lights.

Finally it can just be low quality lamps or a batch of bad ones, assuming you bought a case.
 
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Old 03-23-16, 02:14 PM
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Doesn't sound like a wiring problem to me. It sounds more like the bulbs are failing. 130v bulbs will help but those halogen bulbs run hot.

Have you considered switching to an LED replacement ?
 
 

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