I have 11 spotlights in my kitchen which are 12V MR16 fittings. Recently they've started giving me trouble. Only 5 out of the 11 still work correctly, the rest have gone
I decided it must be a heat issue – the halogen bulbs I had get seriously hot and I thought they might be burning out the fittings. I bought 1 new LED bulb and tested it, and it worked perfectly.
I went ahead and ordered another 4 of a slightly different brand. After installing them this morning, they stopped working. They work when I first hit the switch, then about 5 seconds later they cut out. Worse, now the one that worked fine is also doing this
Has anyone any idea what could be going on here? I intend to call an electrician to sort it out but I'm curious if anyone's seen this happen before. It's made me think the 240V – 12V transformers on each fitting may be the issue
Best Answer
This question is old, but it just hit 1000 views so I thought I'd post the answer.
The 12V PSUs were all at end of life, and were failing. It may have been that the 3.5W bulbs were too low power to work, but either way I ended up replacing the lot with new sockets and LEDs. If I recall these are not stepped down 12V but run off 240V so don't need transformers. I could be wrong about that, it's over a year since all this happened