Recessed Lighting Troubleshoot

[360Youth]

Today was a new one for me and I was wondering if anybody has had the same problem. We are trimming out a home right now and when I turned on a set of cans the other day, the breaker blew. I climbed into the attic to check out the j-boxes and everything looked good. I remembered some weird popping on some of the other cans when the switch was turned on but it was a split second one time deal with no lamp or breaker issues, so I chalked it up to excess paint on the shell and started double checking them as we put the lamps in. So anyway, because of that, on these that that were tripping the breaker, I decided to unlamp them and try the switch again. Everything was good. I got my ladder and a flashlight and sure enough, inside the socket, the tab was pushed back and shorting against the can. I had to fabricate a tiny hook to get behind the tab and pull it down on all five cans. I relamped and everything was good. We have about 50 more up and running so far and have not had the same problem, nor can I ever remember shorting out a recessed can by screwing in the lamp too far. Anybody else have that problem before?

 

[alfiesauce]

Not in cans but in similar socket styles before.
You musta caught the production run where the machinest took a coffee break.

 

[CopperTone]

happened once to us about 6 month ago - halo 4" recessed. the tab was grounding out bacause the bulb pushed it back - haven't had a problem since.

we bent them back and screwed in the bulb until it was snug but not super tight.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

Definitely a problem with the Halo H99 cans (4: cans)
with the socket extenders esp. One of my friends had that same issue--

 

[electricguy61]

http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=105741

See above thread. I have actually gotten Halo to admit the problem.

 

[electricalperson]

i gotten a can from juno that had a short circuit inside of it. the socket screws to the back of the can with a couple screws and they pinched the hot wire undder the screw at the factory. you could remove the socket to attach to different kinds of trims if you didnt use the standard baffle one

 

[360Youth]

Thanks for the info. I will keep it in mind if the problem goes beyond these five cans. Thankfully it has been a fairly simple fix pulling the tab away. The first one scared me a little because it actually arc-welded just a bit. Got it fixed though.

On a side note, is there a trick to removing the insert from the housing? It is held by the metal push tabs from the inside and complete bear to remove. I had another can where the overload was bad and needed replacing and I had to "destroy" the insert just to get to the tabs. I must be missing something.

 

[electricalperson]

Thanks for the info. I will keep it in mind if the problem goes beyond these five cans. Thankfully it has been a fairly simple fix pulling the tab away. The first one scared me a little because it actually arc-welded just a bit. Got it fixed though.

On a side note, is there a trick to removing the insert from the housing? It is held by the metal push tabs from the inside and complete bear to remove. I had another can where the overload was bad and needed replacing and I had to "destroy" the insert just to get to the tabs. I must be missing something.

what kind of can was it

 

[Dennis Alwon]

On a side note, is there a trick to removing the insert from the housing? It is held by the metal push tabs from the inside and complete bear to remove. I had another can where the overload was bad and needed replacing and I had to "destroy" the insert just to get to the tabs. I must be missing something.

Thom are you talking about retro cans-- Halo?

 

[badabing]

Had a situation once kinda like this, only it wasn't the can, it was the bulb. We were sure the bulb worked, we could see the filament in it and it wasn't broke so we kept using the same bulb to test the fixture, we ended up pulling out the switches for the hall light, checking them, trying new ones, rewiring the recessed from the attic and still didn't figure it out until one of us finally was standing there looking at the bulb and noticed the base and side had a little extra metal touching both together. What a long day for something stupid. This was on a modular home that was just being finished put together and we were just doing the final test, so we figured it was more the electricians at the plant that messed up with a splice somewhere then a bulb! =\