"Chris Lewis" wrote in message
...
According to aemeijers :

Huh. So that is maybe what happened to the dimmer in the dining 'room'
area
of the kitchen in my cookie cutter. It has one of those pug-ugly
chandelier
things that uses those damn candle-base bulbs. (as does the other big
ceiling fixture, non-dimmed, also a piece of junk.) Dimmer still works as
a
switch, so haven't bothered to replace it yet. Been looking off and on
for
replacement ceiling fixtures for the kitchen, but none of them in the
stores
seem to have normal bulb sockets. And the current one has one neat
feature-
a downward-facing flood bulb in the center, to light up the table enough
to
read newspapers at.

Yup. Semiconductor triacs act like _extremely_ fast fuses. The
mere whiff of a short lasting a few tens of milliseconds can fry one
long before a regular fuse or breaker notices anything awry.
Mebbe I'll just replace it with a decora single pole, then, and just install
the new dimmer I bought right before I sell it. Being old, I never dim
anyway.

aem sends...