Is my bathroom light fixture arcing?
September 3, 2010 7:59 PM   Subscribe

Our overhead bathroom light fixture flooded from above earlier. The water's been dumped out, and the leak in the bathroom above ours has supposedly been fixed. But now I'm hearing this sound...

The light in the overhead fixture turns on OK (the maintenance guy flicked the switch after he dumped the water out, and it went right on—I was surprised), but when it's off, I just noticed that there's a tiny little crackling sound. The sound immediately stops when I turn the light on, and starts up again when I turn it off.

What could this be? Am I right to be concerned that the electrical connection to the fixture (or something inside the fixture) is arcing? Should I be worried about a potential fire hazard? I don't know that it'll be possible to get the maintenance guy back out here tonight; are there any steps I should take in the meantime?

Note: I don't have access to a fuse box for my apartment or anything like that, so I can't turn off the electricity to the bathroom. Should I perhaps just leave the light on, since I don't hear the sound when it's on? Or would that be a worse idea?

Any pointers for this situation would be greatly appreciated!
posted by limeonaire to Home & Garden (8 answers total)
 
Best answer: A tiny little crackling sound when it's OFF? That's the sound of a small electrical arc. Leave the light on, so that the electricity flows out through the ground (path of least resistance) and call your super. If you can't reach your super, call an electrician and describe it just as you did to us.

The main thing is, get this addressed ASAP. It *could* just be a little leftover water, but I would play it safe.
posted by davejay at 8:04 PM on September 3, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for the advice; I just left a message with my landlord's emergency maintenance line about the problem, and I'm definitely going to leave the light on for now!
posted by limeonaire at 8:13 PM on September 3, 2010


What kind of switch? If it's a wall switch, there isn't power to the light fixture when it's off. If it's a built-in switch, then there could be electricity around when the switch is off.

I think you should turn off power to the circuit until someone qualified tells you it's safe. No energy, no problems. Leaving the light on? Not what I would do.
posted by jrockway at 9:10 PM on September 3, 2010


I'm only recommending leaving the light on because she doesn't have access to shutting off the power. That is a good question, though -- I assumed the switch was in the lamp. Is it a wall switch?
posted by davejay at 9:37 PM on September 3, 2010


Best answer: It sounds to me like you have a short which is of high enough resistance to not blow the fuse. When you turn on the light you give the electricity a better route back home. When it's off, something is shorting (and probably getting hot.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:23 PM on September 3, 2010


Best answer: Turning the light switch off doesn't mean that there is no power in the box that is behind the fixture. Depending on how the building is wired there could be constant power behind the light going to another light or outlet. Id recommend keeping the light on and get someone qualified to come and look at it. To me it sounds like there may be a little bit of water in one of the connections or that when the maintenance guy put the light back up one of the connections behind the light fixture became loose, and started to arching a little.
posted by Advance Boy at 6:49 AM on September 4, 2010


Best answer: Your bathroom's ceiling fixture wiring is almost certainly switched-neutral -- which is a shock hazard especially in a wet location and absolutely an electrical code violation. Leave the switch on, call the landlord to deal with it, and make sure it is rewired properly and not just dried out. If you're not told the wiring is corrected, you should call your local municipality's code enforcement division about this problem because it is absolutely a hazard.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:54 AM on September 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: An update: We left the light on last night, 'cause maintenance never called back. We tried turning it off just now, and have been checking every few minutes to see if it's making that arcing sound. Currently, it isn't. So perhaps the connection dried out—although of course we may yet still have a problem, just a silent one. (We have a full fire extinguisher at the ready, though of course that may not be particularly useful in the case of a ceiling or wall fire.)

To answer an earlier question, yes, it does have a wall switch. That was the source of my initial confusion, actually; my thought was, "Shouldn't this be doing nothing when the switch is off?" From what you're all saying—esp. after Googling switched-neutral—it sounds like this flooding incident may have inadvertently tipped us off to some substandard wiring.

If that's the case, I wouldn't be surprised. This is a 1920s-era building that I noticed off the bat had some...interesting wiring. Only a few grounded outlets, mostly nongrounded ones, a couple of spots near baseboards where it looks like wiring of some sort was run along the wall and painted over, occasionally a tiny pop as I turn off the overhead kitchen and bathroom lights (yep, same bathroom light), and a kitchen light fixture where bulbs have been known to burn out within a day or two of installation (which is probably this problem, but unfortunately, my fiancé and I are too short to replace the bulbs in that fixture—and the bathroom one—ourselves, even with a stepladder).

In any case, I've been told the property management company's going to have someone out to fix our bathroom ceiling this week; unless we see/hear/smell something else odd this weekend, I'm going to call the actual management company, as opposed to the emergency maintenance guy, after the holiday, and see that we get an actual electrician out to look into this.
posted by limeonaire at 9:05 AM on September 4, 2010


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