Halogens keep blowing

[bullethead123]

Hi, My bro has a rental property with 12 halogens in the kitchen diner I don't know if they are low or mains voltage. He tells me they blow quite regularly. The installation was part of a refurbishment done by a professional building firm and he has recently had an electrician out to check the circuit. The electrician said he could find nothing wrong.
Would it be a good idea for him to change all the halogen bulbs to LED ones?
And, if so, why wouldn't the electrician have suggested this?
Chris.

 

[winston1]

I don't know if they are low or mains voltage.

As has been explained many times in these forums mains is low voltage. If you mean 12v that is extra low voltage.

Hi, My bro has a rental property with 12 halogens in the kitchen diner I don't know if they are low or mains voltage. He tells me they blow quite regularly. The installation was part of a refurbishment done by a professional building firm and he has recently had an electrician out to check the circuit. The electrician said he could find nothing wrong.
Would it be a good idea for him to change all the halogen bulbs to LED ones?
And, if so, why wouldn't the electrician have suggested this?
Chris.

Not if he was asked to find if anything was wrong rather than asking how it could be improved.

When you have 12 lamps with an average life of 2000 hours there will on average be a failure every 166 hours which may give the impression of blowing regularly.

Obviously LED would be an improvement but will entail driver changes if they are 12v.

Is your brother the landlord or is he actually renting, it makes a difference?

Someone will be along shortly to tell you these sort of lights are designed not to light up rooms and you should change them to something more suitable. Up to you to decide.

 

[securespark]

There are a few possibilities.

One property I went to had GZ10 fittings designed for that lamp (PAR) where the heat is designed to come out of the front of the lamp, not the back, like dichroics.

But someone had put a load of GU10's in and the fittings were heating up and the lamps popping off like flies.

If the fittings are SELV, the other possibility is a bad connection, usually on the lampholder, but sometimes in the lampholder terminal block. These problems are magnified many times if the lighting is swathed in insulation.

 

[SUNRAY]

As has been explained many times in these forums mains is low voltage. If you mean 12v that is extra low voltage.



Not if he was asked to find if anything was wrong rather than asking how it could be improved.

When you have 12 lamps with an average life of 2000 hours there will on average be a failure every 166 hours which may give the impression of blowing regularly.

Obviously LED would be an improvement but will entail driver changes if they are 12v.

Is your brother the landlord or is he actually renting, it makes a difference?

Someone will be along shortly to tell you these sort of lights are designed not to light up rooms and you should change them to something more suitable. Up to you to decide.

I assume you are referring to some form of spot lights like downlighters.
In my view they don't successfully light rooms. Additionally I am not aware of anyone who has regretted removing them and replacing with something which does work but I do know plenty who have regretted putting downlighters in.

A friend of mine had a kitchen replaced which included 22 50W downlighters, in the first month they had 4 replaced (free by kitchen company) and moaned about the shadows, I was able to find the original hole in the ceiling and retrieve the original cables to fit a new 8ft fluo (as they had at new build), changed the new 2G switch to a 3G and downlighters have not been used since. Fortunately the fitters didn't fit spots under the cabinets to reflect on the shiny black worktops.

In our kitchen we have a suspended ceiling with 3 5ft fluo fittings above, we have a well lit low shadow room with tubes that have been replaced once since installed 12 years ago and I only changed then as I replaced a load in my day job and thought I should do mine too.

My experience of halogens is the very short life span and the relatively expensive replacement costs.

 

[bernardgreen]

Did the electrician measure the supply voltage ? If the halogens are 230 volt and the mains supply voltage is close to the permitted maximum of 253 volts ( 230 + 10% ) then the bulbs are being over volted and will have a shorter life.

If you live near the electricity supply sub station your supply voltage may be set high by the DNO to ensure that people further away from the substation ( with high voltage drops along the same supply cable ) have at least the minimum supply voltage of 216 volts ( 230 - 6% )

 

[ban-all-sheds]

As has been explained many times in these forums mains is low voltage. If you mean 12v that is extra low voltage.

As has been explained to you many times, LV goes down to 0V, so 12V is low voltage.

When you have 12 lamps with an average life of 2000 hours there will on average be a failure every 166 hours which may give the impression of blowing regularly.

It doesn't work like that.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I assume you are referring to some form of spot lights like downlighters.
In my view they don't successfully light rooms. Additionally I am not aware of anyone who has regretted removing them and replacing with something which does work but I do know plenty who have regretted putting downlighters in.

All true.

As is Winston's point that it is up to the owner to decide, but it is IMO very good advice that he at least stop and think about whether or not having to have 12 lights in the kitchen indicates that they are no good at lighting up rooms.

Hi, My bro has a rental property

If that means he is the landlord, and is having to keep schlepping out to change bulbs, or paying someone to do it, that's a mad position to put himself in.

 

[333rocky333]

There are a few possibilities.

One property I went to had GZ10 fittings designed for that lamp (PAR) where the heat is designed to come out of the front of the lamp, not the back, like dichroics.

But someone had put a load of GU10's in and the fittings were heating up and the lamps popping off like flies.
.

Are you sure, i was under the impression a GZ10 lamp shoots heat from the rear and has a different base.
Therefore you cannot fit a GZ10 lamp in anything but a GZ10 fitting.
A GU10 lamp WILL Afaik fit a GZ10 fitting with no harm at all.

The problem comes when fitting a Dichroic GU10 lamp into a fitting designed for Aluminium backed GU10 lamps.

I have also encountered the problem you refer to above regarding heat with 12 volt G5.3 lamps

 

[securespark]

Apologies, I think I've got it the wrong way round. I'll just go back to sleep....

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Are you sure, i was under the impression a GZ10 lamp shoots heat from the rear and has a different base.
Therefore you cannot fit a GZ10 lamp in anything but a GZ10 fitting.
A GU10 lamp WILL Afaik fit a GZ10 fitting with no harm at all.

Yup

The problem comes when fitting a Dichroic GU10 lamp into a fitting designed for Aluminium backed GU10 lamps.

The problem comes because there should never have been a combination of a dichroic envelope and a GU10 base.

But as (I'm sure) someone once found, there are (were) 12V GU10s, so nothing should surprise us.