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| Light socket short? How dangerous? | Login/Join |
| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
In the bathroom of the rental house, the light fixture is a row of those round light bulbs that I think look like they would be around the mirror of a movie star dressing room. (The bulbs are uncovered, as the fixture intended them to be) One of those bulbs was kind of flickering lately, so I had on my radar that it would probably need to be replaced. Well, today, the bulb started to flicker and crackle, and when I looked up at it, there was smoke wafting around the socket and it smelled to me like an electrical short. At this point, I don't actually remember if the bulb completely went out or not, I turned off the light pretty quickly. Obviously, it needs to be looked at and we won't turn the light on or try to change the bulb until it is. So here's my question: is it safe to leave it as is (turned off of course) for a few days? The way the property company deals with maintenance is, you make a request and they send someone out and take care of it. We've already had them come out for a few other minor things. But the problem is, the maintenance company doesn't coordinate with the tenants, and there's no notification for the tenants of when the maintenance people are coming, e.g., they don't send a "on the way" text, you don't know even what day they will come out. They say they come within three days. But there's no way to say "please come any day but Tuesday" for example. As it happens, my piano is being delivered on Tuesday (yay!!! it's been in storage since the beginning of June) and I would rather not deal with having the maintenance crew and the piano delivery guys show up at the same time. And the best way to prevent that from happening is to call in the maintenance report after the piano is delivered. So, is it safe to do that? Or does the potential for some electrical wiring problem exist and warrant trying to have it looked at as soon as possible? TIA for any advice or comments!
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| czarina Has Achieved Nirvana  |
I would be shutting off the circuit breaker to the bathroom lights. Then it's a matter of how long you want to deal with not having electricity in the bathroom.
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Beatification Candidate |
I'd be changing the bulb... with the power off there shouldn't be any danger to that socket. Sometimes the bulb base comes loose from the bulb with a similar set of symptoms. Does the bulb feel loose if you try to wiggle it?
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
What rontuner said. But should you decide to turn off the breaker, be aware that you may be turning off more than just the bathroom. We have some pretty creative wiring in our house, and with our luck, it would be the sump pump or refrigerator on the same circuit.
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
Thanks for the comments everyone! piqué, fortunately, this isn't the only bathroom (there's one other full bath and a half bath). But as WTG, it doesn't look like I can turn off just the bathroom, so I hope we don't need to do that. BTW WTG, our old house (the one we just sold, sniff), which was made in 1960, was very "creative" (great way to put it!) Some improvements had been made to the breaker boxes before we bought it, and we made a few more, but there are some things that just can't be fixed (practically) so we just did our best to make sure the labels were really good and really clear.
Ron, I'm not going to re-use the bulb, and actually once it gets fixed, I will replace all of the bulbs. They all look rather old, despite being LEDs. Anyway, the one that was in the problem socket smells now and is very, very faintly discolored. The discoloration could be bc they're old and there's no cover, or it could be because of whatever this problem is. I will go and see if it seems loose though. We took it out of the socket and didn't put it back in.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Just take any (good) bulb you have and try it in the socket. The old bulb could have fried, nothing to do with the socket. Is it possible it's a CFL? They flicker before they burn out. And they often stink.
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
Is that safe?? CFLs are always the corkscrew kind, right? Or well not really corkscrew, that's what I always call them, but the distinctive spiral thingy instead of a smooth bulb. If so, this is not a CFL. I think it's an older model LED, the kind where above the metal base there's a plastic bit and then the bulb. I'll take a photo...
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
Ok, here are the pics: This is the bulb from the problem socket  See where it says 11w, I think this is an LED, right? A few more photos to show the writing and discoloration, which again could be because of the fixture not having any cover.   This is the fixture  The owners had smaller LEDs interspersed with the larger ones. This is the regular base LED:  This is the kind of bulbs I bought to replace them, notice that the bulb no longer has that plastic part above the metal base 
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
The original CFLs looked like corkscrews. Then the manufacturers put the corkscrew inside what looks like a regular bulb. These are all CFLs: 
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
The 11W is a CFL, about a 40W equivalent. The LEDs are only 5.5W, and they are 60W equivalents.
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
OOOH! So, if you didn't already, please scroll up and see the photos I uploaded. In that case, I wonder if the bulb that went bad was a CFL? That would explain a lot, given the reputation of CFLs!! And the last photo, the bulb says "LED" on it.
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
We are simul-posting!  Re the light bulb. Wow!! I always thought that CFLs only ever had spiral/corkscrew design. I feel like I've been tricked!  Whenever I buy bulbs, I always buy ones that say "LED" on the box, so any bulb I've replaced is an LED. But when we moved into this house, I went through and took out any corkscrew bulbs and replaced them with LEDs. Well, that means there may be some "stealth CFLs" in this house, because I didn't realize this regular shape could also be a CFL. Wow. It's an easy enough fix though, I can go through and check again. But, back to the question of my bathroom light fixture... So, given that this was a CFL, maybe it's not the socket but the light bulb itself??
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I saw the photos before I made my post. The discoloration you see is consistent with a fluorescent bulb burning out. Just curious...is there a dimmer on that wall switch?
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Um, they started doing the CFLs that look like regular bulbs probably 15 or 20 years ago.
Yes, we are cross-posting.
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
no dimmer on that switch. Although there are other switches that do have dimmers.
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