A socket keeps burning out bulbs

Fiat1

Senior member
Dec 27, 2003
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Loose neutral or over voltage. Check the voltage and check the neutral at the main panel to see if the connection is loose.
 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
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Originally posted by: Fiat1
Loose neutral or over voltage. Check the voltage and check the neutral at the main panel to see if the connection is loose.

If the neutral at the panel was a problem I would be having problems all over this floor of the rental.

Voltage was good.
 

alpineranger

Senior member
Feb 3, 2001
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High voltage transients? They can be caused by other things on the same circuit. Is the other socket on the same circuit?
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Carbon buildup in the bottom of the fixture socket. Turn power off and sand with fine sandpaper (test power with meter before sanding). This happened in my garage and the arcing was killing the bulbs. YMMV.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: alpineranger
High voltage transients? They can be caused by other things on the same circuit. Is the other socket on the same circuit?

This could also be possible, but if it were the case, the other downstream bulbs would start popping as soon as the first bulb popped as the first bulb would not be eating the surges and they would pass downstream.
 

olds

Elite Member
Mar 3, 2000
50,124
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Turn off switch.
Reach into the socket with your finger.
Use finger nail to pull tab up a bit to get better contact.
 

herm0016

Diamond Member
Feb 26, 2005
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its hard to help if you keep telling us we are wrong, this is OT, not P&N.

I would still check the connections in the box. they could be corroded or loose and be draining to ground.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
Turn off switch.
Reach into the socket with your finger.
Use finger nail to pull tab up a bit to get better contact.

Oooooohhhh, that too.
 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
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www.alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: Engineer
Carbon buildup in the bottom of the fixture socket. Turn power off and sand with fine sandpaper (test power with meter before sanding). This happened in my garage and the arcing was killing the bulbs. YMMV.

That's why I was thinking of just replacing the socket.

A lot of folks keep pointing towards the panel but I would have problems with other things and everything else is fine.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
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Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Originally posted by: Engineer
Carbon buildup in the bottom of the fixture socket. Turn power off and sand with fine sandpaper (test power with meter before sanding). This happened in my garage and the arcing was killing the bulbs. YMMV.

That's why I was thinking of just replacing the socket.

A lot of folks keep pointing towards the panel but I would have problems with other things and everything else is fine.

If there were carbon buildup in the bottom of the socket, it would most likely have been casued by what oldsmoboat pointed out above.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
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Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Originally posted by: Engineer
Carbon buildup in the bottom of the fixture socket. Turn power off and sand with fine sandpaper (test power with meter before sanding). This happened in my garage and the arcing was killing the bulbs. YMMV.

That's why I was thinking of just replacing the socket.

A lot of folks keep pointing towards the panel but I would have problems with other things and everything else is fine.

If you already know what's wrong and what you're going to do, why did you bother asking ATOT?
 

AlienCraft

Lifer
Nov 23, 2002
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Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Originally posted by: Engineer
Carbon buildup in the bottom of the fixture socket. Turn power off and sand with fine sandpaper (test power with meter before sanding). This happened in my garage and the arcing was killing the bulbs. YMMV.

That's why I was thinking of just replacing the socket.

A lot of folks keep pointing towards the panel but I would have problems with other things and everything else is fine.
Not necessarily. If there is a loose neutral within a pigtailed connection in a junction box or fixture and THAT neutral lead is feeding the problematic fixture, you may have your culprit. This lead could be loose at the panel also, thus adding to the "intermittant" part of it.
more than one dodgy connection will drive you nuts trying to troubleshoot. Thats why you methodically eliminate all variables, in order. ;)
This is also why shoving 3 x 12/2 w/GR romex in a 19.9 cu in box and then sticking a device ( SW / outlet) in it is too much.


 

Paperdoc

Platinum Member
Aug 17, 2006
2,500
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I agree with Engineer and oldsmoboat. I've had it happen, too - a poor contact in one socket causes shortened life of the bulb two ways. First, it causes frequent current surges through the bulb. But it also generates a lot of excess heat in the socket itself, thus raising the operating temperature of the bulb and shortening its life. Furthermore, the arcing this causes makes the problem worse as time goes on. Sometimes you can clean off all the contact points and fix it, but even better is to replace at least the actual socket and any pigtail leads into it, thus replacing all likely sources of intermittent contact. (By doing this, you will even open and re-make the connections to the supply wires, thus probably cleaning them off, too.)

As an example, I have had this occur twice: ceramic socket with screw terminals for power leads, but the connection from the metal containing the screw through the ceramic body to the lamp contact was by a small "rivet" which had worked loose, resulting in a bad connection at one rivet head. Cleaning and tightening the rivet is sort of possible, but replacement is much easier and better. But it made me look really closely at the new socket to be sure its rivets were tight!