low voltage halogen spotlights keep blowing their bulbs

[electrician1993]

Hi guys,

There is a problem with the low voltage halogen spotlights at my nan and grandads house.
The bulbs blow regularly, no sooner have I replaced one another one blows, they are wired to a 5 amp re wirable fuse in a Wylex fuse board which is from the 1960s and they are controled by a standard on/off switch.

I was wondewring weather any of you have ever come across this problem before and how would I go about fixing it.


Regards


Stephen Pester

[simpson93]

hi steven, how many lights are there, and has there been this problem since they were installed?
is it the same ones which blows? how cheap are the lamps you are putting into the fittings?

[electrician1993]

There are six lights and the problem has existed since they where installed, it is generally only two of them which blow alternatley (e.g. one time one will blow and the other time the other will blow) and they are not cheap lamps that I am putting into the fittings.

Mind you the house is like the house that jack built, it has had many different lighting installations done by different people over the years, there are a set of LED lights that have been installed wrong elsewhere in the house, they have been wired in series instead of in parallel so the LEDs are very dim.

Only this morning all the power in the house went out and all the other houses in the street have power, so its not a phase fault that only takes certain houses power out or a big fault that takes everyones power out, I think there has been a power surge and all of the fuses in the fuse board have blown, Manweb are on their way but im not sure weather they would re-wire the fuses for you as they are not service fuses they are the fuses for all of the different circuits in the house so I may end up doing it myself.

[simpson93]

sounds to me like dodgy transformers.
as for the power going out did you test for 230 at the incoming main switch? and other side, could be a loose busbar/cable. had one of those about 2 weeks ago i had 2 look at a shop.

[electrician1993]

The reason why the power went out is there was a fence installed along the line of the main supply cable to the house, the engineer that came out said that they had nicked the insulation of the cable when they put the fence in and it has taken years for water to finally seep into the cable and cause damage to it, so they dug up the cable and replaced the entire run up to the house.
The halogen lights may well have dodgy transformers as they have been connected for a number of years and they may be on their way out.