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Interaction between taps and lights

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AleisterCrowley
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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257155

Postby AleisterCrowley » October 11th, 2019, 1:33 pm

All water under the bridge I guess.

Clitheroekid
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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257225

Postby Clitheroekid » October 11th, 2019, 6:38 pm

Sorry about following up on this, I was away for a few days and I'd forgotten about it till I saw these messages.

Any water or just hot?
What sort of hot water system do you have?
What sorts of lights? Mains or 12V?
CFLs? LEDs?
Any other relevant evidence?

I did some more experiments, and I've found out that it's only the hot tap that activates the change in the lights. I have no knowledge of hot water systems, but it's gas fired central heating and that supplies the hot water as well.

The lights in the kitchen are halogen MR16 dichroic (it means nothing to me, but that's what it says on the box).

I'll supply as much information as I can, but as will be evident my level of technical knowledge is somewhere between nil and zero.

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257227

Postby jfgw » October 11th, 2019, 6:54 pm

Probably what I said!

MR16 are 12V. (Dichroic is just the type of reflector.) This means that they are fed from a box of electronics commonly called an electronic transformer (except by purists). (If the installation is very old, it could be a magnetic transformer.)

If your boiler is a combi (one that heats the water as you use it), it will fire up when you turn on a hot tap. It will have an electronic circuit board and a few electrical items such as a fan, a gas valve and an igniter.

I guess that the boiler is, somehow, interfering with the electronic transformer.

Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257244

Postby richlist » October 11th, 2019, 8:43 pm

I have a situation where when I switch the bedroom light on or off, the action turns the television from off onto standby. I've always assumed it's an interaction between the low energy light bulbs and the tv frequency.

We have exactly the same tv in another room with led light bulbs and operating the light switch doesn't operate the tv.

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257251

Postby Clitheroekid » October 11th, 2019, 9:11 pm

Sorry chaps! This just goes from bad to worse - I just got home and re-tested it, and it’s the COLD tap that triggers it; my humble apologies for misleading you.

I also noticed that it didn't happen when I first turned the tap on. I was filling the kettle, and there was no effect on the lights. It was only after I had boiled the kettle that it first happened. As soon as I went to refill the kettle the lights brightened when I turned on the cold tap.

I’m not sure if this is any help, but at least you now have the accurate version to work on! :oops:

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257253

Postby Itsallaguess » October 11th, 2019, 9:15 pm

Clitheroekid wrote:
Sorry chaps! This just goes from bad to worse - I just got home and re-tested it, and it’s the COLD tap that triggers it; my humble apologies for misleading you.

I also noticed that it didn't happen when I first turned the tap on. I was filling the kettle, and there was no effect on the lights. It was only after I had boiled the kettle that it first happened. As soon as I went to refill the kettle the lights brightened when I turned on the cold tap.

I’m not sure if this is any help, but at least you now have the accurate version to work on! :oops:


Well that's definitely starting to head in the direction of some sort of earthing problem CK, so if I were you I'd probably 'get a man in' to take a look at it properly given the above information...

Of course we'll need a full report of the eventual outcome if anyone makes it out alive...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257281

Postby Itsallaguess » October 12th, 2019, 5:22 am

Itsallaguess wrote:
Clitheroekid wrote:
Sorry chaps! This just goes from bad to worse - I just got home and re-tested it, and it’s the COLD tap that triggers it; my humble apologies for misleading you.

I also noticed that it didn't happen when I first turned the tap on. I was filling the kettle, and there was no effect on the lights. It was only after I had boiled the kettle that it first happened. As soon as I went to refill the kettle the lights brightened when I turned on the cold tap.

I’m not sure if this is any help, but at least you now have the accurate version to work on! :oops:


Well that's definitely starting to head in the direction of some sort of earthing problem CK.


After giving this some more thought, I think one of the key points here might be to ask if, even if the lights did indeed 'brighten' when using the cold tap, can you tell us if you'd used the hot tap *at all* in the 10 minute period prior to running the cold tap?

I ask this because it comes back to my earlier question regarding just which electrical circuit the boiler is fed from, which I don't think we've had an answer to yet, and which may turn out to be quite important here -

1. If the boiler is fed from the lighting circuit, and if the hot-water tap *had* been run prior to seeing the 'cold water tap incident', then there's a good chance that the boiler pump might have still been in 'over-run' mode for some time after the hot water tap was shut off....

2. If the boiler is fed from the lighting circuit, and perhaps influenced by a few things like wiring CSA to the lighting transformer etc., then there's a *chance* that when your boiler is operating for hot water, your kitchen lights might actually *dim* a little whilst the boiler pump is running. You may well not have noticed this 'dimming' effect if it's happening, but boiler pumps will usually 'over-run' when they've been asked to run at any point for hot-water, to help circulate hot-water in the local 'hot-water' circuit of the boiler, to help protect boiler components.

3. If this 'dimming' has gone un-noticed, but at some later time whilst the boiler pump is still in 'over-run' mode, you use the cold-water tap, there's a chance that the pump 'over-run period' might come to an end whilst you're using the cold-water tap, with the pump having done it's job and shutting down...

4. There's a chance that at that point, when you're *physically* using the cold-water tap, that you see the lights 'go back to normal' when the pump over-run stops....

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it...

The simplest method to investigate this theory would be to turn the boiler off using it's local isolation switch and see if the 'cold water tap / bright-lights' issue can still be replicated.....

If it can't, then it would be key to know which electrical circuit the boiler is being fed from. If you turn off the electrical breaker for the kitchen lights, check to see if the boiler is still powered up. If it's not, then the boiler is being fed from the kitchen lighting circuit, and I think this problem would go away if that electrical feed were to come from either the same-floor socket-circuit (with appropriate down-fusing for any wiring-size changes etc..), or an electrical circuit on it's own.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257318

Postby XFool » October 12th, 2019, 10:32 am

richlist wrote:I have a situation where when I switch the bedroom light on or off, the action turns the television from off onto standby. I've always assumed it's an interaction between the low energy light bulbs and the tv frequency.

I wonder if, by "the tv frequency" you mean the TV remote signal? I do not know if this is at all possible but one way to test it would be to tape up the TV's IR sensor (using metal foil to be sure?) and see if the effect is still present. Though my first suspicion would be for electrical interaction via the mains supply.

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Re: Interaction between taps and lights

#257334

Postby jfgw » October 12th, 2019, 11:31 am

richlist wrote:I have a situation where when I switch the bedroom light on or off, the action turns the television from off onto standby. I've always assumed it's an interaction between the low energy light bulbs and the tv frequency.

I have heard of this happening with compact fluorescent lamps. They emit some infrared which can interfere with older TV and other remote control receivers.

Replacing the CFL with an LED lamp should solve the problem.


Julian F. G. W.


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