RE: What the **** is going on!!!???

["Keith Doxey" <ukha@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Alcina,

Its quite common unfortunately.

When a bulb blows, a small piece of the broken filament often falls across
the two leads that support and supply power to the filament. When this
happens, what used to be a 60W bulb will effectively become a several
kilowatt bulb that lasts for a fraction of a second. This is the bright
flash that you sometimes see as the bulb fails. This causes the fuse to
blow
or the trip to pop. The lamps can also arc across the broken filament as
well which causes similar results.

Unfortunately, the high current that flows for a breif period kills the
triac in a dimmer causing it to go short circuit which is why after a lamp
failure a dimmer will often be stuck at full brightness. They can be
repaired by replacing the triac if you can get them apart.

The cure to stopping it happening is a very fast fuse which often costs
more
than the triac and an over rated triac capable of surviving the surge.

So why dont they do this..... MONEY :-(

X10 is designed to a price not quality. Although we pay through the nose
for
X10 products in the UK, most of the components are the same as in the US
versions which are sold really cheaply. To build the level of quality into
X10 would push the price so high that no-one would be able to afford it
anyway.

Just as a point of interest... what way are the lamps in question mounted ?

Cap up or cap down?

If they are in a table lamp or wall fitting with the cap down thee is a
greater risk of blowing the unit as the filament naturally falls towards
the
supports. This wont help in the case of filament arcing but can prevent
some
failures.

Sorry it doesnt solve your problem but hopefully it explains what is
happening

Keith

www.diyha.co.uk
www.kat5.tv


> -----Original Message-----
> From: alcinababe [mailto:alcinababe@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 17 August 2003 10:59
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] What the **** is going on!!!???
>
>
> Last September I bought two socket rockets (LM15EB).  After a
> couple of
> months a bulb blew in one of them and the LM15 no longer
> responded to any
> signals and I couldn't reset it. I thought it was just "one
> of those things". A
> month later a bulb blew in the second one and it too became
> inoperational.  I
> returned them to Letsautomate who, under my year's warranty,
> either repaired
> or replaced them because the ones they sent back worked....
>
> ...Until a bulb blew a second time in each of them whereupon
> exactly the
> same thing happened.  Once again I returned them to
> Letsautomate who sent
> me working ones by return of post.
>
> About this time I was a little concerned about the electrics
> in my house
> anyway (and I needed sooooooo many more sockets than were
> there!), so I
> had my house rewired.  One month and much dust later I
> installed the 'new'
> LM15s into the new wiring. (I hadn't used them in the old
> wiring for fear it was
> faulty wiring that was causing the problem.)
>
> All was fine for 3 weeks then....boom....a bulb blows.  It
> trips the fuse in my
> new fuse box (as my electrician said it would).  I replace
> the bulb, reset the
> fuse...but the LM15 fails to respond!  It won't be reset
> (turn on power to it, send
> an 'A3 on' signal to it four times), it won't respond to an
> All Lights Off and it
> won't respond to an All Off.  It seems to have total amnesia
> about its status as
> an X10 module.
>
> It has to be a fault with the units (I've just had my house
> rewired to rule out
> faulty wiring!).  I cannot believe that I have to replace the
> LM15 every time a
> bulb blows!  At 25 quid a pop (no pun intended) that's way
> too expensive.
> Letsautomate have, under the terms of their warranty, either
> repaired or
> replaced (I don't know which) the units each time, but that
> warranty is up next
> month, and as soon as the next bulb blows I'm going to be
> left with useless
> units.  The whole point of the LM15s was as security lights
> to make it look like
> someone was at home.  But they are totally unreliable and
> therefore useless if
> they blow every time the bulb in them blows.
>
> Does anyone have any idea what's wrong?  Am I failing to do
> some magical
> reset, unmentioned in the manual?  Are they a faulty batch of
> units?  Has
> anyone else experienced this happening when a bulb blows?
> Letsautomate
> claim that they've never come across this before, and indeed
> I can find no
> reference to it on the web, but it's happened with both sets
> of wiring.  I live in
> the middle on London so it's not an unreliable electricity supply.
>
> I'm at a complete loss. :(  All suggestions and opinions
> gratefully received.
>
> Alcina
>
>
>
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