Jhaney
Senior Member
- Location
- owensboro, ky
Well yesterday I was called to a customers house for a trouble call about a light that won't come on. When I get there I start trouble shooting and find that the offending light is on a 3 way, so I open up both switches and find that the one on the outside wall is full of that spray foam insulation. After spending 30 minutes pulling out the foam I find the switch is bad and replace it. I recommended to the customer to never ever put foam in the switch box but too use cover insulation.
Isn't that spray foam a extreme fire hazard? Or am I being overly cautious?
The customers second problem is that the offending light constantly blows bulbs at least one a month. So I start trouble shooting the light fixture and find no issues. So I check voltage and get 125 volts at the fixture but when the switch is off I get 18 volts. So now I'm thinking bad splice somewhere so I put my attic monkey outfit on and start tracing the circuit, I made sure everything was grounded properly, all splices were redone, and since that didn't help I removed everything but the light from the circuit and still had 18v with the switch off.
Where else can I be getting this 18v and before you ask I used 2 different meters to verify my results.
Isn't that spray foam a extreme fire hazard? Or am I being overly cautious?
The customers second problem is that the offending light constantly blows bulbs at least one a month. So I start trouble shooting the light fixture and find no issues. So I check voltage and get 125 volts at the fixture but when the switch is off I get 18 volts. So now I'm thinking bad splice somewhere so I put my attic monkey outfit on and start tracing the circuit, I made sure everything was grounded properly, all splices were redone, and since that didn't help I removed everything but the light from the circuit and still had 18v with the switch off.
Where else can I be getting this 18v and before you ask I used 2 different meters to verify my results.