We are in a new-to-us home, and the breakfast nook has a hanging fixture with 5 GU10 (or at least I think they are GU10) bulbs, all in a row. The 4th one has been dark since we moved in so I decided to tackle it earlier today.
After much wrasslin' and cussin', I ended up breaking the bulb despite trying the rubber gloves 'push and turn' method.
After getting most of it out, glass shards and all, some of it was still left in there so I tried some pliers, only making the problem worse.
Left it for another day, but as I was about to close up for the night I dimmed this fixture (the fixture uses a Lutron I believe) and after working as normal for a few minutes there was a sound like something between a loud click and a snap, and the entire fixture went dark.
The dimmer switch does not respond at all, and nothing lights up on the little dots in the switch. The breaker panel is all fine, nothing tripped.
I am concerned this could be a fire issue, and of course I'd like to get the fixture working again, even with 4 out of 5 bulbs.
What is the likely problem? Is the fixture toast, or the dimmer, or both? How do I go about troubleshooting? I've done light electrical work before (and one time, in a foolish prior life, actually added a 20 amp breaker to a box but I won't be trying that again). I do have some tools but before trying anything I thought I'd check here first.
Thanks in advance!
Electrical – Tried to remove one GU10 bulb, afterwards lost the entire fixture
electrical
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Best Answer
Just replace the stupid fixture. The entire point of the GU10 was to force people to stop using filament bulbs and replace them with Compact Flourescent bulbs. This was in the days when the cost for CFC was higher than filament and the lifetime was the same as filament so naturally nobody was interested in buying them except California who was struggling with the shortage of generation capacity due to their stupidity in electrical regulation.
Today, with LEDs the Edison-base replacement market -DWARFS- the GU10 market and with LEDs costing the same as filament and the lifetimes of them so much longer, there is no need for goofy sockets to force people to replace lights with LEDs the cost savings and reduced replacement intervals are plenty good enough for that. The final nail in the GU10 socket was when CA stopped requiring them in new construction.
I haven't seen a new GU10 fixture at Home Depot for quite a while now. Everything is Edison-base and the vast majority of LED bulbs are Edison-base. They have a few token GU10's in basic sizes for apartment dwellers stuck with this strange deviation from what has got to be the most foolproof light socket ever designed, but the cost of GU10 bulbs is rising as the demand has been falling and we all know where that vicious circle is headed.
The former owner of the home knew the future of that light in your nook was fixture replacement and left it for you to do. Take your wife shopping at HD and let her pick out a new fixture and get some good husband brownie points for this one.