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April 16, 2009
Electirican: low volt. lighting
Greetings,
My better half and I have been having issues with out Tiella low voltage single track lighting system. Last night the lights went out and our breaker tripped.
Tried the lights again, no light and box tripped again.
We would call our normal electrician, but his knowledge of low vot. systems is limited.
Can anyone make a recommendation?
Comments
Try some troubleshooting. Take each of the fixtures off one at a time and see if one of them is the culprit. It may even be that one of them is improperly fitted to the track (if it is a track).
Otherwise its at the high voltage/low voltage connection.
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at April 16, 2009 10:59 AM
We did that last night on the "problem" fixture. No mas. We have not tried the others, so thanks for that advise.
Still need someone to look at it and install an electronic dimmer.
Posted by: Action Jackson at April 16, 2009 11:11 AM
Low Voltage is really not that hard to deal with.
Just think of it as 120 volt, don't short out the wires and everything should be fine.
I am actually surprised that a Tiella system doesn't already have an electronic transformer in it? And if it is an electronic transformer it should have automatic protection on the low voltage side. It is my understanding that most of the systems out there of this nature (not specified by a lighting designer or specially ordered) are under a 105 watts total, which allows for (5) 20 watt lamps.
So if the current system uses an electronic transformer and you are getting breaker trips, I would suspect the transformer before fixtures. If its a magnetic transformer then it could be passing the short back to the 120 volt side, but that would a pretty serious short.
If it is fairly new, then you might even try calling them directly to get a replacement transformer.
My only other comment is if you are using a dimmer to make sure that it matches the transformer. They make dimmers specifically for magnetic and specifically for electronic transformers. A mis-match can burn out either the dimmer or transformers pre-maturely.
As for replacing the transformer, its a pretty easy thing to do. match up the 120 black & white wires and then match up the low voltage wires, which are usually the same color because the polarity doesn't matter.
Good luck.
a Lighting Designer.
Posted by: whyrl at April 18, 2009 3:14 AM
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