Hi I would be very grateful if anybody is able to advise me about a dimmer problem.
I am not an electricician but have in the past added sockets and fixed what was a broken ring in my house left by the previous owners so have some knowledge and experience.
2 years ago we had a new extension built with all new electrics installed by a qualified elctrician onto a new and seperate fuse box from the old part of the house In our new kitchen we have a double dimmer switch which has 8 LV downlights on one switch and 7 on the other. The 7 also have a second on/off switch in the room. They are powered by Electronic transformers (which as I understand are different from wire wound but out of my depth on that one). A few weeks ago the dimmer with the 8 lights made a sparking noise when I turned on and the light stopped working. I checked the socket and it is rated up to 400w on each size. By my calculation we 400 on one side and 350 on the other. My reading on the net seems imply that I should have sockets rated up to 800w for this and also many of the dimmers I found say a max of 5 transformers on the circuit. I'm struggling to find one fits the bill.
We took the opportunity last week to raplace the cheap switches in the extension with MK switches. As a stop gap another similarly rated double dimmer that was being replaced and I put this into the kitchen. As soon as I tried to use it it sparked and broke the switch again. I tried using just a normal double on/off switch instead and it worked fine.
Sorry for the long email but my question is does it sound like I have a wiring issue (eg a short or something) I'm guessing not as just a normal switch on the circuit works fine. Or is it just because there is a surge of more than 400w blowing the switch maybe? If the latter can anybody recommend a suitable dimmer? We are currently looking at using touch /infrared dimmers if possible.
Many thanks if you manged to reach the end of this. Any advice a suggestion gratefully appreciated. I'm happy to get in a qualified electrician in but have a dilemma that a new electrician might say we need to replace half the electrics (when we don't) and the old one might cover up (if thats what happened in the first place) a bad job.
Jarv
I am not an electricician but have in the past added sockets and fixed what was a broken ring in my house left by the previous owners so have some knowledge and experience.
2 years ago we had a new extension built with all new electrics installed by a qualified elctrician onto a new and seperate fuse box from the old part of the house In our new kitchen we have a double dimmer switch which has 8 LV downlights on one switch and 7 on the other. The 7 also have a second on/off switch in the room. They are powered by Electronic transformers (which as I understand are different from wire wound but out of my depth on that one). A few weeks ago the dimmer with the 8 lights made a sparking noise when I turned on and the light stopped working. I checked the socket and it is rated up to 400w on each size. By my calculation we 400 on one side and 350 on the other. My reading on the net seems imply that I should have sockets rated up to 800w for this and also many of the dimmers I found say a max of 5 transformers on the circuit. I'm struggling to find one fits the bill.
We took the opportunity last week to raplace the cheap switches in the extension with MK switches. As a stop gap another similarly rated double dimmer that was being replaced and I put this into the kitchen. As soon as I tried to use it it sparked and broke the switch again. I tried using just a normal double on/off switch instead and it worked fine.
Sorry for the long email but my question is does it sound like I have a wiring issue (eg a short or something) I'm guessing not as just a normal switch on the circuit works fine. Or is it just because there is a surge of more than 400w blowing the switch maybe? If the latter can anybody recommend a suitable dimmer? We are currently looking at using touch /infrared dimmers if possible.
Many thanks if you manged to reach the end of this. Any advice a suggestion gratefully appreciated. I'm happy to get in a qualified electrician in but have a dilemma that a new electrician might say we need to replace half the electrics (when we don't) and the old one might cover up (if thats what happened in the first place) a bad job.
Jarv