I have some 5-8-year-old recessed/downlight fixtures and I'm having a hard time understanding how they are wired. There are a total of 4 fixtures wired to a single dimming switch; the lamps are dimmable. The part I'm having issues with is understanding how they're wired, my understanding is that with a more traditional switch, you have the line wire controlled by the switch, you connect the line wire in one of the terminals and get it out to the load from the other terminal, simple enough, you turn the switch Off and the wire going to the load no longer have current. In this case, the dimming switch has a white wire in one of the terminals and a back wire on the other terminal, the funny thing is that no matter what I do, turn On/Off the switch, the current on the wires doesn't change, the black wire is always live and the white wire never becomes live. I went and tested the terminals directly on two of the fixtures and the black wire is always live and the white wire never becomes enegized. My question is, how are the fixtures turning On and Off if the current doesn't really change? Again, I was expecting the same behavior you get when using a traditional switch where you cut the circuit by turning Off the switch and the fixture becomes unenergized. FYI - The fixtures seem to be wired in series since I see conduit going from one fixture to the other and ending on the fourth fixture. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Great Forum and folks. Have the conventional overhead 2 socket light fixture in kitchen. For the last month or so, incandescent bulbs (75 W) seem to last only about a week ! Works fine for that period. Is this due most likely to the quality these days being so absolutely poor ? What might be other reasons. ? The only thing I can think of for blowing an incandescent bulb is over voltage, and that cannot be the case here. Even if the fixture is bad, or going bad, I cannot see how that would blow the bulbs so frequently. True ? Any thoughts ? Thanks, Bob