An Enlightening Situation...

Though I make well over 200 visits per year and have many repeat customers, there are a core five or so that I have the privilege to serve on a regular basis. What makes these interactions so special is that I get to really learn about what they envision their home to become and I get help them hopefully achieve their visions. Today, I had the chance to help see one of those visions come to life.

Through the lower level of this new build, I converted the traditional 6" can recessed lights to a more modern looking LED style; but this homeowner envisioned something different for the front entry area. For several months, this area was a topic of discussion. I walked her through a number of options and many conversations and measurements were taken. Today, those conversations saw the idea come to life.

The desire was to not create a true project out of converting a 6" recessed can to a 4" junction box setup, so a conversion kit was used. The installation went fine with the exception on one major hiccup... the circuit breaker kept tripping. This has happened before to me due to the way the builder installed a recessed can fixture allowing the neutral to come in contact with the ground, so that was the first area that was checked. The was not the issue.

I certainly enjoy client participation in most projects. I like the conversations and my clients get to learn more about their home; but troubleshooting is a different issue where I insist on acting exclusively independent. Today, my client knew that I was troubleshooting an issue and was trying to be helpful, but was adding more variables to the process. I had to request that they leave the situation to reduce the number of variables. Once that happened, I could walk the issue back to its original setup before the tripping of the circuit breaker.

The new fixture was removed, but the breaker was still tripping. The recessed can housing was examined for any screws that I might have drilled into a wire, and though none were found, the breaker was still tripping. No switches were touched and no other wiring adjustments were made. What the hell? The only other change that was made was a light bulb was removed from another fixture to use in the new fixture for testing purposes. The homeowner removed just one out of the four bulbs in the fixture... a reasonable thing to do. Guess what? The removal of that one bulb revealed a manufacturer's defect in the fixture. With that one bulb removed, the circuit breaker was tripped. How random is that? What were the chances that the removal of that one bulb would reveal that issue? Well, I guess 25%. So weird, but certainly an eye opener.

So, what is the lesson here? When a problem happens, stop and do not add more variables to the issue. Walk the problem back to when it was not a problem. This was certainly an odd one for me since a defect like this one is not common (or at least not for me). Once the issue was addressed, the new fixture was installed and the homeowner was very pleased!