Electrical – Three of 4 kitchen ceiling lights not lighting

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There are four kitchen ceiling lights with single switch. They fit 4 pin CFL bulbs. Only one of the 4 working. Tested with the new bulbs. Why only one works though all 4 has same switch? Thank you.

Best Answer

Your type of fixture uses a Compact Fluorescent Light with replaceable tubes separate from the ballast.

Most likely, your builder fit "builder grade" (i.e. cheapie) CFL fixtures with cheap ballasts. It's not unusual for several cheapies installed together to fail one at a time within months of each other.

A fixture is made up of 4 parts: the tube, the ballast, the lamp socket, and everything else. Generally cheapies are cheap through and through, but the #1 thing to fail is ballasts, and you can obtain and swap ballasts. Aftermarket ballasts tend to be better made, top brands are GE, Philips/Advance, Osram/Sylvania.

Another option is to switch to LED fixtures and there are two ways to do that.

  • Get a true LED fixture which does not have removable bulbs. There's no need for LED emitters to be changeable, since they will outlive every other component including the house. Quality matters because if the onboard power supply fails, that kills the fixture. Don't buy these at big-box stores, visit 2-3 genuine lighting supply houses.

  • Modify the fixtures with a socket that can take a screw-in LED. However this is not to be done lightly: the fixtures are simply not built for the heat of incandescent bulbs, and can burn your house down if you cheated an Incandescent bulb in there. Unfortunately if there is a socket that can take an incandescent, some goober will put one there. So you cannot use a socket for which incandescent bulbs exist, and this limits you to things like Gu24 or Gu10.