• Looking for a smarter way to manage your heating this winter? We’ve been testing the new Aqara Radiator Thermostat W600 to see how quiet, accurate and easy it is to use around the home. Click here read our review.

Is it normal for breaker to trip from lightblub going?

Joined
12 Mar 2016
Messages
362
Reaction score
2
Country
United Kingdom
Hello all

Just wondering if its normal for when a lightbulb goes for it to trip the breaker not the Main MCB but just one of the breakers, I presume its the breaker for the lights but as fuse box is not labled cant say for sure.

For some reason this particular light keeps blowing the light bulbs every 3 weeks, dont know why?

thanks in advance
 
It's not unusual for an mob to trip when a lamp fails, having them fail every 3 weeks is though. What type of lamps & fittings do you have & where are they installed?
 
Hello all

Just wondering if its normal for when a lightbulb goes for it to trip the breaker not the Main MCB but just one of the breakers, I presume its the breaker for the lights but as fuse box is not labled cant say for sure.

For some reason this particular light keeps blowing the light bulbs every 3 weeks, dont know why?

thanks in advance
If an incandescent "lightbulb goes", it is quite likely that a portion of the "blown" filament will "land" across the connections protruding into the "bulb" and cause an almost short-circuit, thus tripping the breaker.

For your question of why "this particular light keeps blowing the light bulbs every 3 weeks", I cannot suggest a solution - except to replace it with a suitable LED.

However, please be aware of the problems in enclosing "replacements" for incandescent lamps into inappropriate enclosures. (See http://sound.whsites.net/articles/incandescent.htm at about half-way down, where "CFLs in Existing Luminaires" is discussed. Much the same applies to LEDs in these inappropriate situation.)
 
For a tungsten lamp when the filament ruptures it can cause ionisation of the gases in the bulb which will be seen as a bright flash and for those few seconds it can draw 100,s of amps, there should be a built in fuse in the bulb however often the MCB is faster acting than the built in fuse so that trips first, it does not happen every time a bulb blows, but is can happen, and it some times would cause a dimming switch to fail when it went.

However for CFL and LED I know of nothing which could cause this to happen, components could go short circuit but compared with tungsten it's rare. I did have an Ikea CFL bulb fail and it was fed from a 16A MCB and it caused the bulb to weld into the holder, clearly it did not have a built in fuse. As a result I no longer buy any Ikea bulbs. Although to be fair it was a long time ago.

Tungsten bulbs can fail due to spikes on the supply, or over voltage, the main reason I went first to CFL then to LED was with 6 bulbs in the room it seemed I was changing a bulb every week, when I swapped to CFL I also increased to 10 lamps in the room, I had a honeymoon period where non failed then it was it seems one every two weeks, within first 18 months of the 16 CFL fitted in two rooms I had 7 still working, I had replaced the 6 in one room with a different make which seemed to be lasting, but that supply had dried up, so with just 7 x 8W rooms was rather dim.

At this point Lidi were doing candle LED bulbs something like 1.6W I got a pair for bed side lamp, but used in living room while looking for some 8W bulbs, I was impressed with the results of the LED bulb, so next time Lidi had them on offer I got another 8 this time 3W they did not have 10 in stock, these were 2 years latter moved to mothers house as they worked better in her shades, and now are around the 3 years old, of the mains powered LED bulbs I have not had one fail, I did get some GU5.3 MR16 lamps from Poundland which failed they were useless anyway at 0.58W but they are the only ones to have failed.

So with the exception of kitchen now both houses are all LED. You may note I don't call them energy saving as in the house they don't save energy, heat from tungsten bulbs means central heating does not run as long, they do not save energy, but they do save in maintenance, but although they appear bright I have noticed the camera shutter speed has decreased so in real terms they must put out less light, but they seem brighter, have dropped from 80W to 30W in the room so only to be expected, I do now need reading lamps in the room.

Although from Asda and like the LED lamps are not that cheap, Home Bargains, Lidi B&M Bargains, and Aldi often have cheap versions which I have found works well, my house large living room now has 50W I did over do it with 30W and those 30W now in mothers smaller room. The other room has two 15W bulbs, with tungsten it would have had a single 100W, and the bed room now has also a single 15W bulb which for a large room is not really enough, it does seem to use LED bulbs you do need to increase the number of bulbs in the room. But they should stop you needing to change every week.
 
The alternative explanation is that the plasma arc created when the filament fails has no current limitation so the breaker is tripping on overcurrent.
 
If an incandescent "lightbulb goes", it is quite likely that a portion of the "blown" filament will "land" across the connections protruding into the "bulb" and cause an almost short-circuit, thus tripping the breaker.

For your question of why "this particular light keeps blowing the light bulbs every 3 weeks", I cannot suggest a solution - except to replace it with a suitable LED.

However, please be aware of the problems in enclosing "replacements" for incandescent lamps into inappropriate enclosures. (See http://sound.whsites.net/articles/incandescent.htm at about half-way down, where "CFLs in Existing Luminaires" is discussed. Much the same applies to LEDs in these inappropriate situation.)
He refers to cents so I would think from USA, since they have a different voltage he is not testing the same lamps as we get here, we it seems like dimmers, to work with a dimmer an LED lamp has to not use the switch mode power supply as these would correct the power removed by the dimmer so would not dim, and also there has to be a few milliamp drain to work the dimmer so the lamps are fitted with a bleed resistor, the EU has said it has to be marked if it will not dim rather than have specials that will dim. This means instead of 100 lumen per watt which LED's can produce, most bulbs are down to 70 lumen per watt.

The LED tubes to replace fluorescent are around 100 lumen per watt, but with the removal of wire wound ballasts from sale the fluorescent is around 95 lumen per watt and around the same life span and less than 1/4 of price to replace, however what the LED can do is produce less light, so a 5 foot fluorescent is 58W at around 5500 lumen and 5 foot LED 24W at 2400 lumen which is all well and good if you don't need 5500 lumen, but it is hardly a replacement will half the output, reason for half output is it will then work with the old wire wound ballast still in place, you just swap starter for a fuse, however the ballast is producing heat so although the tube give 100 lumen per watt the lamp as a whole is down to around 70 lumen per watt because of losses with the ballast.

We are seeing street lamps replaced with LED, I think maintenance is a large factor here, all the control gear is swapped every time we replace an LED which is wasteful but ensures when you swap it then it works, so semi-skilled people can swap the LED lamps, it needs a skilled man to swap the sodium lamp and ensure the control gear is OK, and also the LED light is better directed to where it is wanted, but my son tried swapping from fluorescent to LED at work, and had to go back due to complaints of not enough light. He also had problems of sensors on machines being triggered by the LED lamps, clearly they could be swapped, but when you look at cost of down time to swap them all it was a non starter.

I think the chances of a filament landing across the connections is slim, and if it did then it would likely ionise the gases in the bulb anyway, it's the ionisation which causes the short circuit not the filament. Often with ionisation it will produce a bright flash and coat inside of bulbs with a black deposit.

I suppose your now going to tell me bulbs don't produce light they suck in the dark and that's why the wick of a candle goes black and a bulb goes black when it fails, it has sucked in too much dark and is now full? And if you believe in dark suckers then you must be a sucker!
 
For a tungsten lamp when the filament ruptures it can cause ionisation of the gases in the bulb which will be seen as a bright flash and for those few seconds it can draw 100,s of amps, there should be a built in fuse in the bulb however often the MCB is faster acting than the built in fuse so that trips first, it does not happen every time a bulb blows, but is can happen, and it some times would cause a dimming switch to fail when it went.
I really do thank you for this piece of information.

I had never considered this and had always thought that the inadvertent contact of errant melting filaments was the cause of the virtual short circuits involved when an incandescent lamp expired.

I can now see that, although there would probably be no gas other than Nitrogen within the bulb of an incandescent lamp, it is quite possible that a thermionic discharge could occur when an incandescent filament ruptured, resulting in uncontrolled thermionic emission between the two electrodes concerned.
 
Our breakers trip whenever one of our 240v spot bulb in the kitchen or any of the candle bulbs blow. They always seem to go with 'pop' when just switching lights on. Don't half make me jump!
 
I've seen some worrying questions on this forum over the years, but this one has got to be a contender for the biggest "WT*" ever:

screenshot_1197.jpg
 

If you need to find a tradesperson to get your job done, please try our local search below, or if you are doing it yourself you can find suppliers local to you.

Select the supplier or trade you require, enter your location to begin your search.


Are you a trade or supplier? You can create your listing free at DIYnot Local

 
Back
Top