On Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:58:14 +0000 (UTC), Doug Miller
wrote:

My wife insists on a 75 Watt flood, which gives the right amount of
light, but it gets hot as blazes.

How much do you think 125% over the maximum matters?

A lot. When we bought our current home, I had to replace all of the light fixtures in the kitchen
because the previous owners had done exactly that: put 75W bulbs in fixtures that were
labeled "60W max". When I took the fixtures down to paint the ceiling, I discovered that the
excess heat had made the insulation on the fixture wires brittle and hard to the point of
cracking and falling off of the conductors. One fixture had an inch and a half of uninsulated
wire.

How did you fix that? Just curious.

I've run across many like that, and I always tried to replace the whole
cable. But thats not always possible without ripping apart the whole
house. Other times I had to put an extra box inh the attic and run a
few feet of new wire. I've seen lots of guys just tape up those cracked
wires, but that's not the best fix. I found another method. Put heat
shrink tubing ovet the wires. That works wonders and is easy to do.
However if it's the old BX and the wires are cracked right up to the
metal sheath, you will likely have problems. You're stuck replacing
them.