All landscape bulbs blown in one night?

[K8MHZ]

Kids with sticks, etc.

That would do it!

 

[mark32]

Thanks for all the replies. If I talk with the customer again I'll confirm with her if all the bulbs did indeed go out at the same time. The bulbs came with the fixtures (Hadco) 12v 20w.

Customer does not have young children-
Weather hasn't been too bad, path lights aren't very tall (12" stems I believe) so normal winds wouldn't shake them much-

Not a big deal but I just thought it was strange that they were all out. Thanks again.

 

[jmellc]

True, I have seen this happen for years, many, many times.

Mega dittoes on that. I've seen it with homeowners and in hotels, etc. where maintenance men don't even notice until all are out.

 

[czars]

All landscape bulbs blown in one night

All landscape bulbs blown in one night

Another common reason for bulb failure is too much heat. Check the fixtures to make sure that there is a way for the heat from the 20W bulbs to escape. Since the fixtures were installed at the same time they may all have the same problem with heat dissipation.

 

[kwired]

It is not unusual for all the lights in a run to go out at once. One of my clients is a "Big Box" home store and in two years I have caught maybe three to five calls and showed up to relamp the displays. The calls were all at different stores and the displays come from the vendor, so they were installed according to manufacturer suggestions. Relamp the lights and check back with the customer by phone every month or so. That way they will have to take note of one or two outages. Also the lamps are inexpensive, you could leave them a pack and show them how to change them.

What is likely happening is when the first one goes out the voltage on the circuit increases which causes another one to go out within a short time, which causes more voltage increase......

Many of these lamps have little voltage tolerance, too much means short life, too little means noticeable decrease in brightness.