Pendant Light Overheating?
I have a pendant light over my kitchen sink, it's been in place for about 8 months. It seems to burn out bulbs a little quick, and they're usually a white smokey look when they do burn out. Also, the cable next to the light is turning from a clear to a brown. I'm not sure if it's just from heat, and is ok... or if it's a hazard? I don't see any evidence of melting on the cable or in the light socket.
I checked voltage, and it's around 121.5. The fixture uses 60 watt max candalabra bulbs, and that's what I use in it. Similar Tutorials
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Hello there,
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Hi everyone,
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I have a kind of strange question: How many watts is a 2x40W incandescent bulb? Is it 40W? Why is there a '2x' before 40W?
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Hello I need seriouse help! In my situation I have a three switch, one for the light, one for the vent fan, and one for the heater. This is in a bathroom rent house. My problem is that when I turn the switch on for the light, the light and fan turn on, when I switch the heater on, that switch does nothing, the same when I switch the fan on. The wall plate is labeled: light, fan, heater. So what I attempted to do is put a switch outlet combo in. I have two black wires, two white wires and a ground. So I put the black wires on brass and the white wires on black,( they are black screws instead of silver, not sure if I got the right kind of switch). So when I did that, when I turn the switch on, the fan turns on, but no light, also when the switch is on the outlet is hot.( which fine that is how I want it). But what did I do wrong, why does fan work but not the light. I my biggest fear is that I might have made a fire hazard. Please help and tell me if what have done is safe, and maybe help me figure out how to turn the fan and light on with the same switch.. Thank you for all your input, have trouble falling asleep, keep thinking the house might burn down.. Sorry for the long post
I have an outdoor light fixture that I am trying to replace. The house was built ten years ago.
When I removed the original lamp, I noticed one of the two leads was wired to the ground, and one was wired to the black wire, which is hot per my current sensor. There are three wires in the box - black, ground (bare copper), and white or neutral, all from a single romex cable. Unfortunately, I do not recall where the white was when I removed the original. I wired the new lamp per the instructions, something I have done many times before - black to black, white to white, and bare copper ground to ground. Nothing. The lamp and bulbs are brand new, and I have tried four separate bulbs. I checked the black and neutral with my current sensor and with the switch on and the lamp installed this way, both show as hot. With the lamp not installed, the switch on, and the wires disconnected only the black shows as hot. The switch is single pole, and appears to be wired correctly with a black to each screw on one side and a copper ground on the other. Assuming the new fixture was bad, I reinstalled the old fixture correctly - black to black, white to white, and bare copper ground to ground. Still nothing. No light, and I confirmed the bulb is good by putting it in another lamp. The only way to get it to light is to connect the neutral in the lamp to the bare copper ground. I capped the wires, turned the circuit back on, and identified all the outlets, switches and fixtures on the same circuit. I opened every one of them up (four lights and eight outlets) and found three (one switch and two fixtures in another room) where multiple commons connect. All were properly connected. My outlet tester shows all outlets as "correct". I found no instances of grounds connected to commons or vice-versa. Any ideas? Is it proper to wire this thing the way I found it? Thanks for any and all advice!
Hidy!
Hoping someone can guide me in the right direction. I have essentially no experience with electrical anything unless its a computer, and I am remodeling my Mother's guest room. We picked a pendant light to replace the old flushmount lighting. I've got the old one removed (and yes I have the power off in the room ), and I cannot figure out how to do this based on the instructions given (or on any video I have watched). There are two copper "wires" coming down from the ceiling. They are both wrapped in black insulation, and they form like a little hoop/circle on the end. The fixture has a copper wire, not insulated, and like a double copper wire insulated with brownish black coating. Sorry...I don't know technical terms here, but I would be happy to post pics. I just need help installing this thing. I've done flooring and plumbing and everything else you can imagine a chcik might figure out how to do, but I am stumped here. Please help me do this! It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult!
I'm installing a new light in a closet with an in-line switch. Because of the build of my house, a mid-run receptacle is the only power source available without ripping open a bunch of wall and ceiling. I've got everything installed and tied into the receptacle with appropriate pig tails, but whenever I turn the power back on, the breaker for that circuit instantly flips. I've double-checked all the connections and wires, and they are connected to the appropriate terminals. Tied the pig tails into the terminals on the top socket of the receptacle.
Could this be the result of a faulty switch? The breaker trips whether the switch is in the off or on position, and there are no bulbs in the light fixture. I'm stumped. The receptacle in question is rarely used, and I've powered off everything else in the room to be on the safe side, but the breaker trips.
I'm trying to fix a problem with a track light installment over the a bar I've just put in. I've done it before. never had issues. but this particular problem is driving me nuts. It just defies logic. The electrician who actually installed the associated dimmer switches with this dining room area was called as it seems it may be a flaw with his wiring, but he's blown us off and I have to try and solve this myself.
This is how it's all set up. I've been rehabbing our home from top to bottom, and converted our old kitchen into a dining area. Within this dining area are four sets of lights, all controlled from one box containing four dimmer switches. I set up all the new wiring and installation of the lights in the ceiling, and we paid an electrician to come in, check everything out, set up the multiple switches, and connect it all to the board. It's all new copper wiring from beginning to end, as I didn't want to connect or splice in to the old aluminum wiring that was in place. All the new wiring and lights are on a dedicated 15 amp breaker. Three of the sets of lights were set up to be available from the day the electrician came around. The fourth, for the track light over the bar, was left hanging from the ceiling capped off and with the switch off, as I still had work to do installing an overhead wine rack, under which the track was going to be set. Two days ago I finally got around to putting the track up, but after setting it in place and connecting the power up the lights wouldn't work. I took the lights out to our kitchen, where I installed another track light system some time ago, plugged one of the lights in, and it worked just fine. I then went back to the bar area and used a spare track, then a spare connector, to see if I could isolate the fault, yet neither of the items provided a solution. Now here's the weird bit - every time I tried checking the system out, I'd get 120 volts showing from the wiring and from the track when I'd test with the multimeter. But the second I'd put a light into the track, the multimeter would drop to zero on the voltage reading on either the wiring or the track. Take the light fixture back out, and the voltage would pop back up. Inserting the light was thus completing some kind of odd loop. It wasn't just one light - I double checked by grabbing working lights from the kitchen track and inserting them into the other track - the same problem would pop up. Finally, having come to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with the track at all, I took the whole assembly over to a nearby wall outlet, used some spare electric cable to connect up to the appropriate slots - presto, the light came on! I even double checked all this by grabbing another light fixture destined for our bathroom, and tried connecting it to the wiring over the bar. Nothing. Yet as with the track light, the minute I took it over to the wall outlet and connected it, the light worked. So everything logically points to the fact it has to be something to do with this individual circuit, right, because a) the light fixtures work when plugged into another circuit and b) the other three dimmers and lights hooked up in the same box work fine and draw power from the same wire cable/breaker combination. The only things left that I can think of is that the electrician has either wired the dimmer switch up incorrectly or that there's some kind of flaw inside the switch itself. Does this make sense? A friend also told me to double-check to make sure that the black wire feeding power to the light was indeed the hot wire, and it is. If I touch it with the black test lead from the multimeter and put the red one to the neutral I show 120 volts. If I keep the black test lead on the black wire and put the red test lead to the ground - I also show 120 volts. A final point. I know I'm not overloading the circuit - not even close. With all four dimmers maxed and every light on - including the test light on the track - I'd only be drawing 8 amps on a 15 amp breaker, besides which I'm only using one set of lights while I'm working on this problem anyway. This is a dedicated circuit, so there's no additional power being drawn away by something else. So how am I getting 120 volts from this wiring, according to my multimeter, yet it won't light up ANYTHING and keeps giving off the indication that some kind of loop or short is being created every time I actually plug a light into the track? It's got me totally stumped. Anyone have any ideas? |