Halogen ceiling lights - a warning!

[fat controller]

The house that we moved into in October has a semi-open plan bottom floor (L-shaped living room/dining room) and has three light fittings in the living room are those low voltage halogen type (G4 bulbs) - below is a picture of our living room just as we were starting to move in, so you can see the style of light I am on about:



Now, back in November, one of the lights packed up, flashing rapidly when you put it on; I dug the old meter out, whipped it off the ceiling and deduced that the round transformer in the top of the fitting was shot. I wired it back up, mainly so I didn't have wires hanging out of a ceiling, and left it out of use until I could get round to getting a new transformer.

I finally got round to ordering a new transformer last week (this light is at the dining room 'end' so not used as often as the other two), which arrived today. Prior to ordering I did a bit of research, and was a bit perturbed to find that the part I was needing was well known for failing on a regular basis; a few posts on forums referred to another brand that was a potential suitable replacement, so I decided to give the alternate brand a whirl.

The transformer that came off was an Eaglerise SET60CV as pictured at the top of the page in the link.

The new transformer is an Aurora RD-60

Now, the scary bit - I took the light fitting down to replace the fitting this afternoon, and immediately noticed an acrid, burnt smell. Once I had the light off the ceiling and apart, I popped the Eaglerise apart, and was greeted with this:



When I had the fitting off to test it, I didn't notice any smell at all, so I don't know if this transformer was in this state back then or not - either way, its definitely not been happy and looks to my eye as though it has been uncomfortably close to combustion!

Not only is the Aurora replacement significantly cheaper, but it also comes with a ten year warranty, and seems to be better built - and it works better too (the other lights pause for a wee second before coming on, the one with the new transformer is on instantly).

I am going to order another two of these Aurora units and fit them to the other two lights , despite them still working at the moment - £17 is such a small amount to prevent a fire.

In short - if you have a light fitting with an Eaglerise transformer in it that plays up DISCONNECT IT before the bugger burns your house down!

[hibbsy21]

Relating to halogen bulbs, my house was bodged by the previous owner and the halogen spotlights in our bathroom and shower room have no fire hoods on them. They are all fitted in to the ceiling which is a chipboard type thing. Almost all of them have burn marks around them and are really starting to get me worried. So as soon as i can i will be getting firerated spots and firehoods. It really amazes me how shops can sell cheaper products with no fire safety certificates or any other safety feature. Thinking of changing to LEDs as they will be cheaper and not likely to burn the house down!!

[Tractorman]

Beware Hibbsy, current regulations say that bathroom and kitchen wiring has to be tested to Part P regulations! Obviously you are a qualified electrician, working to those standards!!!!

You are certainly right about the DIY shops selling as if everyone is an expert electrician with no apparent thought of anything but profits. I did notice when a friend put low voltage spots in his house (he IS a trained electrician) that the transformers were very specific about fitting and the need to use certain bulbs (and a specific number of bulbs). I suspect the "transformer" in the picture is a "Switch Mode" supply - not a big heavy transformer as such. These tend to be "matched" to the load they are working with and can overheat if not enough lamps are working - as well as too many lamps connected!

I was on a Fire Warden's course some years ago and they said plug-in power supplies were one of the most common causes of fire - these are often switch mode supplies (especially in lap-top power supplies!).

[hibbsy21]

No i am not a sparky. But my mums husband is a health and safety guy and can sign things like that off as safe. TBH I don't like doing electrics in houses and after reading that the halogens need to be a certain spec, I don't think I will be doing them myself. Purely because I live in a terrace house and don't really want to burn other peoples houses down too. When i have the money for it I will be having the entire house rewired as there are switched that don't actually do anything and plugs that have broken a kettle and a rice cooker. There is one in my office that i have condemned as you plug stuff into it and it buzz's and trips the circuit breaker. Scary stuff.

I can believe that laptop chargers are a high cause of fires. You can probably fry an egg on most of them. My desktop will never have that problem as its all watercooled :P lol

Rich

[fat controller]

The transformer pictured is/was 60Va switch mode type transformer, which was an integral part of the light fittings (I presume that they came complete due to the design of the light fitting); sadly, I cannot vouch for how they had been treated prior to us moving in here in September last year, but I do know that since we have been here they have been correctly loaded (all six bulbs working at all times).

As it happens, I have replaced the transformers in the other two fittings this morning (they were still working, but I was no longer prepared for the risks having read of so many failures of the Eaglerise ones) - hopefully these new ones will be OK. One of the fittings has been on pretty much constantly since I fitted it back up this morning (been really dull here), and I have just had a wee feel of the casing of the fitting and it seems nice and cool.

[ruggedscot]

Hi

Sparkie by trade although not been on the tools for a while..... Health and Safety are different to sparkies and unless he is properly trained in electrical test and inspection he cant sign off the installation. Ive seen a few scary things with switchmode power units - they can cause no end of issues - also they way they work the ac mains is usually rectifed and then processed through a high frequency switch and transformer and then re rectified and passed out to the lamp - theory is that if you operate at say 100kHz then you can use a smaller transformer to handle the power required to run your bulbs, instead of the big lump of iron and copper you need at 50Hz. I can remember in days gone by computers used switchmode and if you plugged one in without a load connected they would fail in a spectacular fashion.... Could it be that these ones you had fitted could not cope without a load connected ? also that burning is concerning !
There are too many people out there that think they can hook up a light fitting and la de dah they dont put into place the correct fittings to match the environment. Fittings designed for mounting in a metal or other fire proof location being installed in chipboard or plaster board. These fitting heat up ! If you are trained up in installation you will know this and you wont install the wrong fitting in the wrong location !
Thanks for sharing - hopefully make people think twice.....

[fat controller]

The new units I have fitted clearly state that they require a minimum 20w load for normal operation, 35w if being used on a dimmer switch; I have all loaded with 60w all the time, which is their design rating so they should be happy with that.

The Aurora units that I have used in replacement seem to be a bit better quality - its the little details like the inclusion of a decent dual cord grip with a central guard to keep the input and output connections separate, and the fact that the connectors themselves sit straight and securely on the PCB (they are all over the place on the Eaglerise); that light fitting I referred to in yesterdays post was on until bedtime, and it remained cool throughout, so I am a happy man

I spent the early days of my career working with electronics, however never actually qualified - some of the stuff I was taught has stuck with me though, and I am still picky about making sure that connections are neat, secure and that any parts required are the right spec for the job, and decent quality. You'll understand why I could feel my hair curling when I saw that somewhat 'crispy' looking transformer - and reading all the tales of woe relating to Eaglerise on the net meant that wild horses would not have deterred me from swapping the ones in the other light fittings as well.

[rosso rocket]

Something else that bothers me is that ceiling down lighters or spots (intergral to the ceiling void), should have the correct type of lamp fitted for this purpose, so I am led to believe.
Ordinary GU10 lamps off the shelf should not be used but special ones for use in the downlight or vertical operation. i.e. downlight rated...how many people are aware of that?
I don't see this written anywhere in the stores, so bunging in any old GU10 Lamp may also present a fire risk!
Can any of the electricians out there clarify this one please?

[hibbsy21]

Something else that bothers me is that ceiling down lighters or spots (intergral to the ceiling void), should have the correct type of lamp fitted for this purpose, so I am led to believe.
Ordinary GU10 lamps off the shelf should not be used but special ones for use in the downlight or vertical operation. i.e. downlight rated...how many people are aware of that?
I don't see this written anywhere in the stores, so bunging in any old GU10 Lamp may also present a fire risk!
Can any of the electricians out there clarify this one please?

I must admit, I am probably at fault for doing this too. Simply because you see some cheap bulbs buy 10 of them and think they are safe.

[SammoVWT]

As a word of warning, dont overload the lighting circuit with high wattage bulbs, they will all try to achieve max power. Ideally the fuse should have tripped on the unit, however if the fuse is dodgy or gone then you will cook the transformer.

The regulator should stop the current from soaring too high to the bulbs, but if the required draw is significantly higher its going to get very warm, very quickly. Mostly due to the fact that the power regulator will probably pick up the voltage drop and try to sink more current, the result of which is more draw on the transformer and more heat from overwork. Either uprate the transformer to a bigger one, and add a heatsink or use lower rated bulbs imo. Stick to the rated, especially when using multiples of bulbs, this needs to be taken into account.

The breaker wont trip unless theres a genuine earth fault unless you have an overcurrent device protection as well as an rcd (which is rare these days) you can quite easily overload a circuit.

Of course all of this should be stated in the manual, but if the installer has ignored it, it creates a dangerous problem.Glad nothing serious happened though!

(I have blown some power regulators on switch mode supplies from previous experimentation and trying to use cheaper parts from saving money. These things can glow orange when overworked and then shatter rather spectacularly, hence appropriate heat sinkage and ventilation and correct current draw at the load end).