Lightbulb dripping melted wax ?!

sev112

sitting on bed watching Tv and the ceiling light shade started swinging!?
 No obvious bang or bump from the loft
yhen stopped

couple minutes later can smell melting wax,
yhen a bit of gold wax dripped from the light onto the bed
all the time, the light was on, no flickering or anything

So turned it off, got torch out and there is sticky wax of some kind all running down the outside of the bulb. Looks like the whole plastic “shroud” above the bulb fitting has significantly melted !

any ideas what the likely culprit is ? Too powerful a bulb for the fitting?

sev112

I think it’s the latter, the lamp shade “fitting” is what has melted - ie the bit of plastic between the bulb and the bayonet which keeps the bulb flush to the lean shade fitting 

joeyowen

halogen bulb, or LED?

Seems very odd but might just be getting verrrry hot and melting the plastic covering

darthed1981

I wouldn't have thought a light bulb in normal operation should be getting hot enough to melt it's own fitting...

What kind of bulb is it?  The hottest kind I can think of is the old 100w and lots of fixtures used to be Max 60w back in t'day.

spark240

darthed1981 said:

I wouldn't have thought a light bulb in normal operation should be getting hot enough to melt it's own fitting...

What kind of bulb is it?  The hottest kind I can think of is the old 100w and lots of fixtures used to be Max 60w back in t'day.

Yep...usual culprit...old or cheap import landholders can stay 100w lamps for long, if indeed it is a 100w lamp.

Otherwise just loose termination inside getting hot.

ICBM

It's possible the plastic has degraded over the years and become essentially a different compound with a lower melting temperature. I'm sure I've come across something like that... can't remember where.

You'll probably need to replace the fitting now anyway, but one of the huge advantages of LED bulbs is their much lower power consumption for a given brightness - only around a tenth of incandescent. That means you can have brighter bulbs *and* less heat at the same time, so a fitting that's only rated for 60W can easily take much brighter bulb, if you want. I've got a 13W LED in one of mine which is brighter than a 100W incandescent.

sev112

Lampshade is less than 6 months old !

77W lightbulb , halogen

ICBM

sev112 said:

Lampshade is less than 6 months old !

77W lightbulb , halogen

That may be the problem. What's the rating on the fitting? Most are only 60W.

Equally, a lot of cheaper modern fittings seem to be shit as well. A friend of mine had an Ikea desk lamp that melted itself even with the supplied bulb in it.

FelineGuitars

yup - halogen's get plenty hot

Sassafras

Have you seen the film Poltergeist?

thermionic

Reminds me of when I was a kid, one rainy Sunday morning my sister (4 years younger) was playing with a canister of soap bubbles. She blew a big bubble into the air and it gently floated down through the lampshade of a table lamp. As it landed on the hot bulb it hissed loudly and we looked at each other... then it went BANG, firing shards of glass up like a gun pointed at the ceiling.

boogieman

When I worked in a diy shop we used to sell MK and Volex electrical fittings. Volex switched their manufacturing from the UK to somewhere abroad at one point and the quality went right down the pan. Their light fittings would discolour and go brittle, then eventually fall apart. The worst thing was they smelt like rotten fish when they got hot and started to degrade. 

Foster

The last lightbulb I bought cost £8 (cheapest I could find, everywhere else wanted £35 for 1 bulb)

To be fair it was a bulb for a theatre follow spot. 2500w bulb. Now that gets hot fast!

sev112

ICBM said:

sev112 said:

Lampshade is less than 6 months old !

77W lightbulb , halogen

That may be the problem. What's the rating on the fitting? Most are only 60W.

Equally, a lot of cheaper modern fittings seem to be shit as well. A friend of mine had an Ikea desk lamp that melted itself even with the supplied bulb in it.

80W - marked on the lampshade 

ICBM

sev112 said:

80W - marked on the lampshade

Sounds like someone hasn’t done their testing properly then. It’s a bit close, but ratings should always be conservative and this clearly isn’t. In the worst case it could be a fire risk - the melted plastic running onto the very hot bulb could potentially ignite if the bulb explodes.

I would either replace it with a 100W fitting or replace with the same and use a lower power bulb.

I would maybe even think about reporting it to the relevant authority - @spark240 will know who. Yours won’t be the only one that’s a hazard.

sev112

ICBM said:

sev112 said:

80W - marked on the lampshade

Sounds like someone hasn’t done their testing properly then. It’s a bit close, but ratings should always be conservative and this clearly isn’t. In the worst case it could be a fire risk - the melted plastic running onto the very hot bulb could potentially ignite if the bulb explodes.

I would either replace it with a 100W fitting or replace with the same and use a lower power bulb.

I would maybe even think about reporting it to the relevant authority - @spark240 will know who. Yours won’t be the only one that’s a hazard.

Thanks, which means we have to remember where we bought it from
Mrs sev112 will know

sev112

Which she did! Wickes.
i might pop in tomorrow and have a friendly chat with them

spark240

77W Halogen?.......ok so I googled that , its the latest equivalent to 100w light bulb I guess...even so, if this is hanging from the pendant the base will get real hot, and its quite possible it will damage the holder.

Anyhow...see how it goes at Wickes