Track Lighting Warning PSA

[pdub]

When we got all moved in and settled in here in Tennessee 10 years ago, Sue Unit made a tactical error and said, "We've got room for a pool table right here." Yes we do Darlin!

The spot where there should be a dining room table, it was not conducive to hanging one of those classic pool hall over-the-table lights, not with my skills at least. So I improvised. It's been so long, all I remember is how much trouble it was to put together the track lighting. I couldn't buy all the parts at the store, I remember having to order stuff from here and there. I ended up with some 120V light cans and a few 12V cans with transformers.


I noticed yesterday one of the bulbs was dark, one of the 12V ones. No worries, we've got a box full of bulbs, 120V and 12V. As always, going into the project I over-bought. Replaced the bulb, no result. Then I got to looking, Holy crap, look at this.


This is the kind of #$%& that'll burn the house down. I think. Does anybody here have lots of experience with track lighting? Should I have mixed 12V and 120V on the same track? Everything I could find out back then said that was okay. And how close was this to disaster?

[pdub]

Post mortem, it's hard to tell what happened in there, other than some wires and electricity decided to fight. I don't like this, it's not like it's something that get shaken around and jostled, it just hangs there minding its own business, or it's supposed to.

[70chevyC-10]

Scary stuff -

[silver_bullet]

Generally what happens at a loose termination....normally due to a piss poor factory joint....

[pdub]

The more I look at this, the less sense it's making. I'm theorizing, and I may take the thing to pieces and go after it with the volt meter - what if the main capacitor on the circuit board went dead short and sent all the power to.....it was not a wire short, like an arc event. That wire just sat there and melted, all by itself. After ten years.

I'm way more than interested because on that track we have 4 more just like it. We do today at least, we may not have them tomorrow.

[pdub]

My capacitor theory looks flawed already, there should be some burns and melted flux on the back of the board if a component went dead short. I think.

[pdub]

Those 12V cans, five of them, are in the garbage can out by the street, no hesitation. That nearly burned our house down, it sure could have. No, it SHOULD have. Threat disabled.

[Dan Barlow]

Way to go after it . My coworkers house caught on fire on Christmas . Squires had stashed pine needles around the flue and in the soffit ( sorry about the spelling ) caught the attic on fire . Firemen saved the house but they won't be back in it till spring . Real shame as they just bought it last summer and completely redid it inside with new floors and paint and cabinets . And a young family in our church had a flue failure and a fire . There house was saved as well . Severely smoked up . Glad you got a pass on that one .

[pdub]

I'm a freak, a fanatic, but that right there, that should have burned the house down. With us in it. PLEASE, if you have 12V track lighting, throw that shit away. It's old stuff anyway, get rid of it. Gosh we were so lucky.

[Deaf Bob]

My capacitor theory looks flawed already, there should be some burns and melted flux on the back of the board if a component went dead short. I think.

2 nd row up, 4th glob of solder to the right just from the left looking at it..before that blank gap.... See what I mean? Solder is different color... Turn it over.. Lookit the (probably) resistor.. Will have a hole or a drop in it.. Betcha..

[pdub]

Yep, I see that now. Good catch.

That's in the trash though, along with the other 4 like it.

[Deaf Bob]

Yep, I see that now. Good catch.

That's in the trash though, along with the other 4 like it.

That tiny thing failing might have bridged more voltage than supposed to.. Unseen, unfound .. Scary shit!
Made a simple circuit to flash "Merry Christmas" with LED's One tiny resistor was wrong, melted the springboard spring used tor circuit building it only has 4 volts thru it but man it stank and poofed.. Started developing shakes.. Good luck soldering tiny shit like that!

[pdub]

The scary thing is, seeing what "almost" happened. Just sitting around dumb as hell......duh, a light went out. Gotta replace it.....and THEN see.....that's scary shit. That thing.....it killed itself. Somehow, when it cooked itself, it was done. It melted the plastic on the side of the case, and that was a lot, but that was all, it decided to just not work anymore after that. No completed circuit at all, switch on or off.

That should have burned the house down. I mean, that was it right there, burn the house down. It was only a miracle it didn't.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I just had one almost catch on fire - yeah, not thrilled with those at all

[Huskinhano]

Pdub I'm a electrician. Resistance = heat. Poor connection is what caused that. I'm not fond of those push on connectors for that reason. Every connection means resistance and heat.

A friend of mine is a fireman and fire inspector. He told me his house almost caught on fire and he wouldn't have believed the cause if he hadn't seen it. He walked into his living room and saw smoke coming off a wooden coffe table. They had a glass crystal hanging in a window. The sun caught it just right and the crystal acted like a magnifying glass burning a hole in the table!

New codes require "arc fault" circuit breakers in most rooms. When you have a fault, bad connection it has a frequency to it. The arc fault breakers see these anomalies and open the circuit.