Need some electrical help!

[elkhorn]

Good morning! I have a unique electrical problem that has me stymied. About 1 year ago I replaced all the can floodlights in my kitchen with LED floodlights. They worked great with no problems.

The problem now is that when the lights are turned on they will occasionally go on and off sequentially - like a light show. They'll do that for 4 or 5 minutes, then come on and stay on. Usually. The other day, they cycled on and off like this for 15 minutes. I changed the switches and still the same problem. The breaker seems a bit loose so I pushed in back in. Still no improvement (the house is about 15 years old). This doesn't happen with any other lights - just the ones in the kitchen.

Any thoughts? I took a video of the lights flashing and showed it to an electrician friend and he said he's never seen anything like that. Could it be the breaker? LED bulbs?

Help!!!

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Herb G]

Probably the bulbs getting ready to go.

 

[Skie_M]

See if swapping out the bulbs fixes the problem.

 

[schapekop0701]

120 or 12 Volts ?

Iff 12 V then your electronic transformer is ready to go.

Iff 120 V then 1 of your led lights is ready to go.

 

[jttheclockman]

Did you know that LED lights flicker all the time It is just that they flicker or shut off and on at such a rapid pace your eye does not see it. The more advance bulbs today have filters built in to help this effect even more and they will continue to improve this technology. Slow the frequency down and you will see them flicker. You will get problems like this when the power companies adjust the power grid in the summer for demand loads. It can have an affect on led equipment.

Now the thing that concerned me is the breaker. You said it was loose or is loose. It could have been loose and you do not have a good connection somewhere. The flickering you see is the bulb going through a check. The electronics in these bulbs is sophisticated enough to sense when a bulb is closing in on end of life or if there is a circuit problem. The capacitors in those things can break down over time. That breaker could be a problem or it could be the bulbs are nearing an end of life. You could always change one out when it goes through this with a regular incandescent lamp and see if it too flickers.(if 120V) If so then it is a wiring problem (loose neutral ) If not I suspect the bulbs. It will not be the switches unless you have a dimmer on them and that can be another problem.

You can take those bulbs that are flickering and try them in another fixture and if it is the bulb you will get the same results. Need to start somewhere and that is where I would start looking. Good luck.

 

[More4dan]

I have a friend of a friend that owns a LED light company selling industrial bulbs with different life ratings. The only difference is the programming on the circuit that turns off the bulb after the advertised life.

It's likely the bulbs. Try a normal bulb to check.


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app

 

[elkhorn]

Herb, Greg, Peter, John T and Dan: Thank you for your suggestions. Peter, yes, it is 120V. It appears that the consensus is that it's the bulbs. I'm going to go to Home Depot today and buy a contractors box of regular bulbs (I need 14!) and try them. I'll let you know how it goes.

I appreciate your help!

Since we're talking about light bulbs, I"ll share a British joke from another friend here on IAP:
I saw my mate Charlie this morning, he's only got one arm bless him.
I shouted - "Where you off to Charlie?"
He said, "I'm off to change a light bulb."
Well I just cracked up, couldn't stop laughing, then said,
"That's gonna be a bit awkward init?"
"Not really." he said. "I still have the receipt, you insensitive bastard."

Have a great day.

 

[Skie_M]

I got a ton of the compact fluorescent bulbs in 4-packs from Wal-Mart back when they were on sale at 88 cents a pack sometime in the past 2 years ... I got 5 packs, and haven't used a single one yet, since I still had them all over my house already.

 

[jleiwig]

Most of the LED bulbs should have a pretty good warranty on them. I know the Cree bulbs I bought from Home Depot 2 years ago have a 10 year warranty no questions asked. You may want to look into it before shelling out more money for other bulbs. Most LED bulbs shouldn't be going bad within one year that is why they come with such a great warranty. A typical LED should last for around 80,000 hours. I'd find it hard to believe that all of them would fail at the same time on only that circuit just out of the blue like that. I'd try replacing the breaker first. That's my $.02. I'm shocked your electrician friend didn't suggest that first.

 

[Jolly Red]

I had a similar problem some years back, lights would flicker or go off and on randomly. Turned out the service from the pole to the house was corroded, and I had to get it replaced. Hope it's not that drastic with your electric.

 

[gimpy]

The reason they are doing that is because the "base" of the bulb get's hot......It appears the reason they are blinking is due to the heat the cans are holding. It could be that the bulbs are not rated for the cans....Check with your local lighting supply store, they may have the correct bulb for the style cans you have

 

[Skie_M]

The reason they are doing that is because the "base" of the bulb get's hot......It appears the reason they are blinking is due to the heat the cans are holding. It could be that the bulbs are not rated for the cans....Check with your local lighting supply store, they may have the correct bulb for the style cans you have

Should have nothing to do with his issue .... he's coming into the area and turning the lights on first thing in the morning or something, and it's doing it till it stops ....

Now ... there may be an intermittent short that is having an effect till the unit warms up and things expand enough to bridge the gap completely, but that's the opposite problem from overheating.


In any case, keep some spare known good bulbs round the house just to test if it's the electrical connection and wiring or the socket or the bulb unit itself ... isolate the problem and work back from there till you find the underlying fault and fix it. Standard circuit troubleshooting.

 

[TonyL]

My BIL is an electrician and I had a very similar issue (even worse with LEDs that claim to be dimmable - I don't dim them anymore..mine only work consistently with full voltage). His answer was inline with what JT stated in an earlier post.

The first batch I bought at HD, they all had to go back; the second batch I bought at Costco...19 of 20 of them worked, but not when trying to dim them.

I was changing bulbs, sockets, checking breakers etc and couldn't figure-out the problem. I had no luck with the HD LED outdoor floods either (motion activated). I may have bought the wrong ones, incompatible, etc. The Costco ones worked for me, but again, can't really dim them.

 

[jleiwig]

I didn't read anything about a dimmer, but Tony brings up a good point: if the lights are on a dimmer you have to get one LED rated. I kept having issues due to a timer not being rated for LEDs. Replaced it with one compatible with LEDs and have had no problems.

 

[jttheclockman]

Reread the OP first post. The lights in question were working for 1 year before the problem. As I mentioned I did not like his posting about the breaker. Because if you have a loose connection weather a breaker or a neutral wire you are now inducing more current into those led lamps and they can not take it and the life expectancy is diminished greatly so even though they are subject to last 10 years you have no idea what you did to the circuitry in them. You can go the warranty route if you have the info. You can have a circuit that has a loose connection and when first turned on the wire is cold but as it heats up it expands and may then complete a circuit. This happens with cold solder joints in circuit boards and sometimes can be a pain to find.

As with most posts when it comes to asking for help on electrical questions much info is left out. I would question the fact that he said he had the lights changed a year ago. Does that mean the entire can was changed and if so could there be a loose connection. He says nothing about a dimmer switch but again I refer back to the 1 year of working time.

Need to start somewhere and looking at the bulbs themselves is the place to start and the tings to try I mentioned already.

 

[elkhorn]

Update! I changed out the light bulbs as suggested here and have left them on for quite a while. NO flickering or blinking! John T asked about the "changing the bulbs". John, when I installed them about a year ago, I just replaced the bulbs - I did not change the cans. Although the original LED bulbs I put in said that they were "dimmable" I did not have them on a dimmer switch. Just a plain old wall switch. I think that I will take the ones I just removed and put them in a lamp and let it run and try to see which one is blinking.

I'll keep everyone posted on how this is working out.

I do appreciate everyone's help and suggestions. IAP is an Awesome on-line family and forum.

Happy New Year to everyone - may it be healthy, joyous and successful for you and your families.