On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:39:54 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 05:45:18 -0400, mm
wrote:

On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:16:21 -0700 (PDT), Jo
wrote:

The other night I went to turn on the lights at the light switch by my
front door and it made some noise and the lights wouldn't come on.
Some of the electrical outlets in the neigboring room wouldn't work
either. It tripped the circuit breaker so I reset it. I tried again to
turn the lights on at the switch and it tripped the circuit breaker
again.

There is some problem in the wires to that light, or the light fixture
itself.

When it does this, the light switch makes a weird noise.

Does anyone know what might be wrong here? I know the wiring in the
house is piggybacked, if that makes a difference.

I don't know what you mean by piggybacked?? But I gather everything
was working until the other night, so I'm curious to know what you
mean, but I doubt it's the problem.

And should there be
any problems using the electrical outlets that are somehow connected
to the light switch, as long as I leave the lights off?

I doubt very much if there will be. The off position he mentioned was
the position before you tried to turn the light on. If you have 3-way
switches**, two switches controlling the same light, leave both of
them the way they were. If you turned one on and blew the breaker,
and didn't turn it back off, turn it back off and leave it that way.
(Most people automatically turn a switch off if something goes wrong
when they turn it on, if they know something went wrong. You hear the
weird noise, so you probably already turned it off. You'll know when
you reset the breaker.

** They call them 3-way, but they are really 2-way, so don't wonder
which is the third way.

My TV is
plugged into one of those outlets, so I want to make sure it doesn't
get damaged somehow.

It will be okay.

It's not especially likely that the problem will be behind the wall
switch. You could take off the plate if you want, and look for soot
or black marks on the inside of the plate, or anywhere near the switch
in question. That woudl be clue there was a problem in that area, but
I really don't expect it. Is your house more than 60 years old? when
did they still use cloth insulated wires. 80 years ago? That kind of
insulation can go bad and fall off just sitting around in the wall for
80 years, but even then the wires wouldn't be touching each other.

It's more likely it's in the light fixture, which gets rained and
snowed on, at the wires or the socket. I've never had a burned-out
light bulb cause a short circuit, which is what you have. When my
bulbs burn out, they just "open" and I have an open circuit, which is
like having one more switch in the circuit which is turned off. It's
like having a water pipe with a valve closed. A short circuit is like
having a water pipe with a hole in it, except with electricity, the
leaking wire has to touch something that conducts electricity and is
connected to a return path. Water will just go anywhere.

It wouldn't hurt to unscrew the light bulb some, or even to change the
bulb, but I wouldn't throw away the old bulb without testing it in a
lamp. It's probably fine.

Thanks,
Jo
I have had bulbs short internally - much more common in low voltage
bulbs like automotive tail lamps etc - higher current per watt of
output and more vibration may have something to do with it - but #1157
dual fillament bulbs are well known for this failure mode.

I HAVE had it happen on 115 volt (or 120 - whatever you want to call
them) bulbs - the most recent one being a tri-light.

That's amazing. It sounds like at least 4 separate bulbs. In the
1157, the struts that hold the filament at each end are 1/2 inch
apart. How could they ever touch each other? I've never seen the
inside glass break.

Tri-light? A two filament bulb, with three settings?