A very strange thing happened last night

evoke

I guess i'm still in shock at what happened last night. I have a small bathroom with 6 spot lights in the ceiling (MR16 low voltage bulbs and the spotlights are rated for bathroom use).

The ceiling/loft space above spot light has a wire cage so that there is no insulation on each light to stop it from overheating.

Last night the bathroom lights were on and I was downstairs and I heard a crashing sound and the sound of glass breaking.

I ran upstairs to find one of the spotlights completely shattered on the floor, detached from the low-voltage connector which was still in the ceiling.

Two other spotlights were dangling down from the power cable.

It was most bizarre sight. I cleaned up the glass and replaced one MR16 bulb and twisted all three holders back into their housings and tested the lights and they all work fine.

What could have caused this to happen? There's no sign of anything untoward in my loft and i've checked the roof on all sides and nothing irregular with that either.

It seems be be some sort of shock wave type blast that happened. Maybe one of the bulbs exploded causing two other lights to come loose from their holders?

phill99

Power surge maybe

macman

I think your theory is correct. One bulb blew and the cabling moved when it imploded. This somehow caused two more to be dislodged.

evoke

macman wrote: »

I think your theory is correct. One bulb blew and the cabling moved when it imploded. This somehow caused two more to be dislodged.

Maybe rattled the ceiling slightly, causing two others to drop?

Rockingit

When you say the lights had dropped, do you mean just the lamps had fallen out of the cans or the whole light had un-sprung and fallen down?

Find it hard to believe either scenario tbh, if the units are fitted correctly to start with. A lamp failing will cause an element of current surge, yes, but to have warmed a cable sufficiently that it's lost that much mechanical strength to end up moving by expansion/retraction is just beyond likelihood - the energy involved is enormous and you'd have seen evidence of it elsewhere.

More likely is that the lamps aren't actually clipped in properly and the exploding lamp caused enough vibration over the plasterboard to rattle them loose.

evoke

^ Two lamps had fallen out of their cans. One lamp had detached itself from the power cable and smashed to the ground.

By cans I mean the plastic holder that fits in the ceiling. The lamps twist-lock into place into the holder.

So what I had was one lamp fallen to the and two lamps dangling by their mains cables. Perhaps they weren't twisted into the holder properly to begin with, but it was a very unusual thing to happen.

I've had one MR16 bulb blow a couple of months ago and it certainly didn't explode. The only other thing I can think of is some sort of pressure change in the loft caused by wind causing the bathroom ceiling to wobble.

Rockingit

evoke wrote: »

By cans I mean the plastic holder that fits in the ceiling. The lamps twist-lock into place into the holder.

It might be that the twist-locks slowly undo over a period of time through heat expansion, that's entirely feasible!!

evoke

Rockingit wrote: »

It might be that the twist-locks slowly undo over a period of time through heat expansion, that's entirely feasible!!

Yes, I think so. I found the twist action is a bit rubbish and there's no click-stop. You twist the lamps onto the holder by twisting them on by about 1cm of twist action. The mains cable to the bulb is solid-core cable so I think the cable resists the twisting action and could untwist the lamp from the holder over time.

I'm going to take a good look at how secure the lamps are in the holder as, fortunately, nobody was in the bathroom at the time! Judging by the clues, a bulb blew with considerable force.

cyclonebri1

No, not having it;:mad:

Poltergeist