I have seen the light
Here’s one for the Theoretical Physicists amongst us.
I mused yesterday about my errant garden light and its random habit of doing its own thing.
I discovered a new trick last night, purely by coincidence and I can only assume that somehow the light familiarised itself with my scribbles on the subject. It had never occurred to me that garden lights could be amongst my readers, but we live in strange times.
Anyhows, back to last night.
But first maybe I should explain the lighting layout in the kitchen/living room. There are three main circuits. There’s one for the living area and two in the kitchen, with one over the sink area and the other the other side of the room. Usually the living section is the first to go on, followed by the sink circuit when the kettle need to be boiled or [God forbid] that I should have to do the washing up. The three sets are very rarely used together.
Last night the garden light was pulsing away merrily. I had already switched on the living area set as that covers the area where Penny is most likely to drop a poo [or four or five]. I went and switched on the sink lights. I realised something…… the garden light was now steady and bright. Was this coincidence or had I made a breakthrough? I switched off the sink lights. The garden light started flashing again!
Later on, I was getting ready to go to bed. The garden light was burning brightly. As I was switching of the room lights I thought I would throw in one last test. I switched off the sink lights. The garden light started flashing. I switched on the sink lights. Garden light went steady. I switched off the sink lights and the garden one went dark which should have been its default state at that time of night.
I mused on this conundrum. How did switching the sink circuit affect the garden light even though each is on a different spur? The first thought was that the sink lights [which are on a dimmer switch] could somehow be interfering with the LED circuits. I discounted that as that would have been obvious when I first installed the garden light. My next thought was that maybe it’s the voltage. Maybe changing the drain on the supply was affecting the garden light? That would explain why things had started to play up after a long period – the supply voltage had changed somewhat?
Living in a rural area has taught me that leccy supplies can vary somewhat and even disappear at times. There have been times in the past when the voltage has dropped dramatically and lights became a mere glimmer and everything else refused to work.
It’s time to call an electrician. There are a couple of other things needing attention so it wouldn’t be a wasted call-out.
As luck would have it, I have the number of a good leccy cowboy.
If you find an electrician, could you ask him to pop round here and mend the electric vent in our downstairs loo please?
I’ll pay him the going rate of course!
Our outside light is solar powered, so when Lily goes out for a late-night tom tit, it blazes away for just enough time for me to step in said poo the next morning…
We have 2 wall lights, only a few feet apart above the settee they are fed from a fused spur on the power circuit. Shortly after fitting LED bulbs one started to flicker. I replaced the bulb and it still flickered. I swapped the bulbs, the same light flickered. So I replaced the entire light fitting, it still flickered. I replaced the bulb again, but with a different brand of bulb. Success! I eventually decided that any two bulbs from the original pack could not be put on a common feed, whenever they were one would flicker. Electronic witchcraft in the LED power circuits?
You might think you have separate circuits but they will all be commoned / joined at the other, input, side of your main fuse / circuit breaker box.
You, a country boy, will also be at the far end of a long mains feed from electricity supplier transformer. This all results in your leccy being very susceptible to voltage spikes and drops generated by your neighbours as well as within your own house. Similar to water hammer effect when you turn a tap off very quickly.
All this new fancy electronic stuff generates voltage spikes because it uses very fast “switches” to switch the leccy off and on to simulate leccy frequency many times higher than your 50 Hz mains.And every LED light bulb will operate at a different high frequency. What they manage to cram into a low energy, mains powered, light bulb is amazing, all so the actual LED that generates the light can receive a couple of volts, dc, at a frequency high enough that the average eye does not notice the flicker. But this magic is not perfect so all this very fast switching inside the light bulb sends voltage spikes back towards your fuse box, and then on to every thing connected to it. These spikes will affect the electronics inside the light bulb and thus the light output. Sometimes, if you are lucky, passing your leccy supply to the troublesome light through a ferrite ring, a choke, will take the edge off the spikes and reduce your problem. It is all white man’s magic.