Is there an electrician in the house?

Stonehead · Is there an electrician in the house?

Since we've lived in our house, the bedroom light has taken a few minutes to warm up and emit its brightest light. I assumed it was a compact fluorescent light, like the others, and didn't think about it.

When the bulb went recently, I unscrewed the cover on the light fitting and discovered it was actually an incandescent light. I thought this was a bit odd, fitted a new CFL and discovered it wouldn't work. Two other CFLs and a spare incandescent have also failed to work.

The light switch is a standard one with no dimmer.

The wiring entering the switch checks out with a multimeter, but despite good connections at the switch end and the light fitting end, no current is reaching the light fitting.

I can't pull the wiring out that runs from the switch and the fitting, so it's either snagged or there's a junction box in the ceiling somewhere. And that probably means taking up the floor upstairs to get to it.

But before I do, any thoughts on what the problem could be and how worried I should be about would be appreciated—especially as it's impossible to get an electrician out to look at it. (Same with a plumber, but that's another story!)

To summarise:

For five years an incandescent bulb has started out dim, then reached full brightness after four or five minutes. (No dimmer.)
Then the bulb blew.
Now, no bulbs will work in the fitting.
No current is reaching the fitting, but the switch is live on both sides when current is put through it.

Townie

Hi Stoney...

I'll show this thread to the OH (he's an approved electrician) tonight when we both get in from work and will get back to you..

IainC

have you another switch panel you could swap over with it just to test whether it's the switch itself that's at fault (would be preferable to ripping up a floor I'd have thought.)

Stonehead

I've done that (keep a box of three as spares). It's not the switch.

Townie

Hi Stoney...

Townie's OH here, have read the post and wants to ask you the following ...

Is there voltage at both connections at the switch, regardless of which position the switch is in ie on/off?...

If so, this would indicate a lost neutral i.e. slack connection or broken cable. If there is voltage on both cables, at the switch only when the switch is in the on position, and no voltage at the lamp, this would indicte a broken switch wire or slack conenction, possibly check junction box, or the connections at the light fitting.

How did you check for voltage at the lamp? Some light fittings have push contacts, in other words you have to put your lamp in to get voltage at the contacts.

If you still have problems, please feel free to contact me.

Robin

Stonehead

Thanks for that.

There's voltage on both cables at the switch when the switch is in the on position, and no voltage at the lamp. I used a clamp multimeter for this.

I checked the voltage at the lamp by disconnecting the neutral and live wires that run to the light from the switch and hooked them up to a 6v battery. Then I removed the light fitting and used the probes from the multimeter to check if there was a circuit. There wasn't.

From that, I decided there was a problem with the wiring between the switch and the fitting. What I don't understand is why the incandescent bulb was coming on like a CFL.

Townie