Last night we bought some new lightbulbs to replace the ones that have blown over the past few weeks in our elaborate chandelier in the living room. Being sensible, I screwed them in with the power off, but flicking the switch there was an almost bang and the fuse box tripped.
Hmmm.
I unscrewed one bulb, reset the trip, and tried again. Fine! So I tried again, putting that bulb in. And this time, rather than just tripping the fuse box, it created an enormous green spark inside the switch itself before knocking out power to the whole room...eeeek!
The switch itself is absolutely knackered. The spring inside must have melted, as the switch is now permanently on. This led me to needing to open up the back box and rewiring the switches this afternoon. This, I guess, is the key (only?) advantage of having three-switch plates but which only have one switch actually doing anything! A quick change of the wires onto another switch and we had sensible light switching restored. Hooray!
2 comments:
When this happened and looked too complicated (aka dangerous) to fix by torchlight we did call our landlord and explained the problem. I was quite touched that our landlord was looking out for us by saying "don't play with electricity". Maybe that's the closest they get to health and safety out here?
Console yourself - it's only 110 volts (Jim). Otherwise there's a Polish chap round the corner we can send over ... (Net)
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