Robert 'Crab Bait' White consents to losing his houses

[Arthur Rubin]

On cars there is something you can put between the LED and car that fixes it. Am incandescent bulb does the same thing for me here.

If you put a resistor in-circuit, it will heat up when the switch is on, which might damage the LED. In a car, you can use the body of the car as a heat sink. I suppose you could use an active load which might cause the heating to occur nearer the switch.

You don't also have aluminum wiring, do you. It was popular in the US around 1970. We had it removed in our house sometime in the 1990s; the electrician said there was burn damage to the wires. Most of our outlets still don't have a good ground. I don't know about the switches.

[grixit]

Suggestion for Gregg: instead of connecting the lights directly to the router, connect them all to a hub, and have one device dedicated to running them.

[NYGman]

You don't also have aluminum wiring, do you. It was popular in the US around 1970. We had it removed in our house sometime in the 1990s; the electrician said there was burn damage to the wires. Most of our outlets still don't have a good ground. I don't know about the switches.

It is actually solid copper.

[aesmith]

Again, it is the same issue cars have sometimes when switching to LED turn signals. They will blink fast like a bulb is out, or on some cars show a bulb out indicator. I think it has something to do with current draw. On cars there is something you can put between the LED and car that fixes it.

That's correct, but the better way is to use an electronic turn relay so you don't have to. Personally I can't see the point in fitting low-energy LEDs, then having to fit something to make them use just as much power as incandescent.

Regarding the house, can you clarify two wire vs three wire switching? This must be some US terminology I think. In the UK a simple light switch will be two wire, permanent live from the supply and switched live to the light. Two way switching has wires between the switches as well, but treating the two switches as a logical unit there's still only a permanent live in and switched live out. What you're describing sounds more like the presence or absence of Neutral at the switch, or CPC.

[aesmith]

Turning briefly to Robert White, have we missed anything regarding his trial for Affray? This was scheduled for this Spring, then delayed and I don't think I've seen any mention since. Presumably if it had gone ahead and he was acquitted he'd be trumpeting this everywhere.

[NYGman]

I'm sorry I'm not an electrician and don't really understand this stuff, but in my old place every light switch had three wires a ground and two others I believe one was positive and one might be neutral. All three wires have to be hooked up to the light switch for it to work. My house only has two wires like you explained but the housing wiring in the UK and the US are completely different where we have a central fuse box with multiple fuses, you have fuses in your plugs or inline. If I recall theses differences were due to a lack of copper and copper wiring available after world war II for use in reconstruction of homes destroyed during the war. The UK method uses a lot less copper.

As to adding a load to the energy efficient bulbs, it isn't a big load. Currently a 25w incandescent light bulb with 3 other 5w LEDs are in my porch light. I really just need another 20w to make it work with 4 LED bulbs, and 4 5w LEDs are much brighter than 4 25w incandescent lights which burn out quicker.

[aesmith]

According to a quick Google there's no electrical difference. Three wire just means that Neutral is present next to the switch (not actually switched). In the UK that's "looped at the switch" meaning that the supply goes from switch to switch with the lights as spurs off each switch. As opposed to the older method where the supply goes from light to light and the switches are spurs. Electrically I can't see the difference in terms of what your bulb sees.
https://www.vesternet.com/pages/apnt-23 ... ng-systems

[eric]

OK, time to clear up a few misconceptions here. In North America, your 120 volt general duty circuits normally consist of three wires - Line (which is hot), Neutral, and Ground. Neutral is connected to Ground at the breaker box. Older homes only ran the Line and Neutral wires to plugs and sockets, not a problem normally except for potentially disastrous safety consequences if you crossed the Line and Neutral when rewiring something and the fact that Neutral could go hot for long wiring runs. In fact he may even have one of these ancient knob and tube wiring configurations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring

Now to get to the dimmer switch problem. For some very good basic engineering reasons that I won't go into here, at minimum brightness there is a very small voltage difference, 17 volts RMS comes to mind for some reason, left between Line and Neutral, at maximum brightness it is 120 for an ungrounded dimmer switch. Normally this minimal voltage is shunted to Ground at the switch. He doesn't have a Ground wire, so putting in a single incandescent bulb supplies this shunt to turn the triac in the dimmer off.

So now we need some potential solutions. The first and most obvious is to rewire his house. Expensive proposition but would dramatically increase its resale value and also a lot safer which would reduce his homeowner's insurance. A much simpler proposition would be to replace the dimmer switch with a push type dimmer. On/Off is switched mechanically by pushing the knob, turn the knob to control brightness.
Personal note - the oldest part of my house was originally knob and tube, I made sure it was replaced before I purchased it.
edit to add - in my career I worked on some projects which had scenarios very similar to the above where we were using electronic switching (think dimmers on a larger scale) for devices. Along with that I spent a number of years as an electrical safety guy making sure that manufacturers had a clear understanding of when and where to put fuzes and insulation on their machines. A lot of stuff that is done in the UK/EU is forbidden in the US - think multiple breaks in the Neutral, fuzes on the Neutral side, etc.

[eric]

According to a quick Google there's no electrical difference.

Sorry, does not apply to the US. As I mentioned above, you need a Ground for the dimmer to work properly. Without a Ground the output will never drop to zero. Similarly induced voltages on the Neutral side may cause the dimmer to operate erratically, or even worse the potential for the zero crossing to fail which is a major fire hazard.

[Dr. Caligari]

Could we possibly get back to discussing Crabbie?

[NYGman]

Was knob and tube at some point but "updated" somewhere between 50-70's. So I don't have the exposed wires running through everything, but I don't have the neutral and it likely would be a fortune to retrofit. A single incandescent is serving as terminator I guess, and normal non-smart dimmers do work just fine, but smart switches are better than smart lightbulbs.

[John Uskglass]

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https://www.diynot.com/diy/forums/electrics-abroad/

[exiledscouser]

As a young electrical engineer balanced precariously on top of a ladder I would innocently ask the old sweats to pass up a light bulb for a fitting.

Bulb? They’d shout

Feckin BULB??????!!!!

Various conduit boxes would then fly my way.

Bulbs, I was informed, grow in the ground, daffodils, tulips. What the glass ones are are lamps. A lesson never forgotten.

As for LED lamps, they will run off the static in a woolly jumper. If they won’t extinguish completely then I suspect the neutral could be carrying a small current.

By three wire switches I assume that one is a line or live, one is a switched live which goes back to the bulb lamp to turn it off and on, the third is an earth or ground which is terminated at the back box and sometimes the switch plate.

[JamesVincent]

Just to confuse things even more.......

Part of the problem with your description when talking about 2 vs 3 wire is that modern wire is referred to as 2 wire. If you go to buy a roll of 14 gauge wire it will be labeled as 14/2 and it will have a black, a white and a green. If you buy 3 wire it would be labeled as 14/3 and would contain a black, a white, a green and a red. The red is called a traveling wire. As someone mentioned it can be strung between 2 switches to turn on or off fixtures from 2 different switches or it can be used as a constant power. Like if you install a ceiling fan and you want the fan to run while the lights are off, or vice versa, you would wire the switch as normal and connect it to the side you want switched and then bypass the switch and run the red to the power for the other part. The fan would then use the same neutral and ground as the lights but would be switchable at the unit instead of the wall. They make a 4 wire, which has the red and also a blue traveling wire. Never used it, never ran that fancy a circuit.

Switching out old wire isn't really hard, just tedious, especially if it's a multi-story house or building. If you do have aluminum, non grounded wiring I would either do it or have it done just on general principles. One less fire hazard can never be a bad thing, especially considering it's more than likely cloth wrapped, and hot power lines running through dry rotted cloth, especially through old and really dry wood, is never a good thing. As a note I know of nowhere that aluminum wiring (old style) is code so at some point in time it may have to be done just to be able to sell it. That's one of those your mileage may very things, some areas may enforce that, some not. There is modern aluminum wiring but that's generally relegated to heavy power lines, like the lines coming into your house, and your talking more like 0 gauge or bigger.

Now back to your regular scheduled nutjob.

[JamesVincent]

Was knob and tube at some point but "updated" somewhere between 50-70's. So I don't have the exposed wires running through everything, but I don't have the neutral and it likely would be a fortune to retrofit. A single incandescent is serving as terminator I guess, and normal non-smart dimmers do work just fine, but smart switches are better than smart lightbulbs.

You have the neutral, what you don't have is the ground. Black is power, white is neutral. Just a suggestion but if you're not inclined to do it yourself I would seriously get an estimate to have it changed out. Honestly I'm kinda impressed that the smart switches and whatnot haven't burned up using them in a system like that.

[aesmith]

According to a quick Google there's no electrical difference.

Sorry, does not apply to the US. As I mentioned above, you need a Ground for the dimmer to work properly. Without a Ground the output will never drop to zero.

Do you not have RCDs in the US, or maybe only very insensitive? UK dimmer switches don't have an earth connection, and you just choose a model suitable for LEDs. For example ...
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/ ... Dimmer.pdf

[hucknallred]

Do you not have RCDs in the US, or maybe only very insensitive?

I refer you to the works of Electroboom on Youtube

[NYGman]

Just to confirm, they are most definitely copper wires and have a plastic black/white covers. At least in the switch boxes there is no cloth covered wire. There are nobs in the attic but power lines long removed and replaced. I would think the solid copper wire I have is worth a lot, but factoring in basement and attic, that's four floors to rewire, and lots of outlets and switches and would need to replace with new 3 wire copper. I Just think converting will be quite costly, even taking into account recycling the old copper. I had it all inspected and looked at prior to purchase, and it looked ok then, and we really don't have much load outside the kitchen, which was redone in the 80's so should be a little better as it's newer.

[AndyPandy]

Could we possibly get back to discussing Crabbie?

It would appear not, where’s a moderator when you need one ?

[JamesVincent]

Could we possibly get back to discussing Crabbie?

It would appear not, where’s a moderator when you need one ?

There's been at least 3 moderators involved in this discussion so I would say they're right here.