House wiring? (slightly off-topic)

[Magnus Danielson]

From: IXQY at aol.com
Subject: House wiring? (slightly off-topic)
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 08:45:40 EST

>  Hello everyone,

Hi there Andrew,

>  I mainly lurk here and try to absorb as much info as I can. A lot of it 
> tends to bounce right off though..  ; )  

Now, some discussions are really into the depths, but when you don't
understand, please "come out" and ask, you (and others) may get good
answers and learn by it. Whatever you do, don't keep shut! ;)

> In the near future, I intend to 
> post some questions pertaining to modifying my small but growing modular, but 
> for now I have a slightly off-topic problem that hopefully someone can help 
> with.

We will await your questions...

>  I moved into an 18 year old house a little more than a year ago. In this 
> house, I have a problem with light bulbs burning out really often. I probably 
> replace anywhere from one to five light bulbs a month (!). This is throughout 
> the house and is not limited to one or two light sockets. It also happens 
> throughout the year, so I don't think it's related to my central AC unit, 
> which I previously had thought.  Some light bulbs go out as I'm turning them 
> on and others go out while they are already on.
> 
>  For the few times a month that I turn on my synths, I wonder if there is any 
> electrical damage being done to them by whatever is destoying the light 
> bulbs. The only explanation that I can think of is that the house wiring is 
> substandard. Hopefully this is not the case, as I would think this would be 
> an expensive repair bill.

For an 18 year old house, if the wiring was good and no major abuse
has been done, I'd remove that from my list. I live in a 27 year old
house, and wiring is not a trouble.

No, first of all I would check the voltage you have in the outlets. If
this is in the upper range of the tolerance scale, I would expect to
see a much higher frequency of lamps burning out...

There are small plates to smoth-start a lamp that you can put in your
lamp sockets, it is just a resistor and a bimetal contactor. When you
power this up, the lamp is being pre-heated through the resistor but
at a lower voltage and current. Then, when the heat is sufficiently
high the bimetal will spring over and short out the resistor and the
lamp will run at full voltage and current. This effectively increases
a lamps life. Isn't others that have noticed that lamps mostly burn
out when you light them. They may pre-fail when lit, to give a hum,
but still gives light. If you turn them off and on again, then they
finally fail totally.

When one makes big lamp signs, you can increase the lamp lifetime but
preheating, it's not enougth for generate much light, but it is
enougth to keep the coil heated enougth.

As for your synths, unless you have a very high voltage level, they
should be safe. You could get a line conditioner, but there is a lot
of crap out there...

Things like over-voltage arresters migth be what it take (if you have
alot of spike crawling around). It migth just be a fairly clean
voltage but too high voltage. Maybe your power company migth be of
assistance there.

Maybe Larry Hendry could shed some of his high voltage light over
this. ZzzaaaAAAAaaaapppp....

Cheers,
Magnus