John Grabowski wrote:
I have had good luck shoving the end of a wooden broom handle up into the
light socket and turning counter-clockwise while maintaining pressure.
Other people have told me about using a potato, but I have never tried that.

Make sure that the power is off when attempting this.

Recessed lighting housings are generally easy to pull down for access to the
junction box. Look around inside the perimeter of the housing. You may see
some small screws. If you remove them, the can should loosen and you should
be able to pull it down just below the ceiling. Don't attempt to remove it
completely with investigating how it is wired.


John Grabowski
http://www.mrelectrician.tv




"kj" wrote in message
...



I was doing a routine lightbulb replacement in the recessed ceiling
fixture in my entrance hallway when the top of the bulb sheared
off cleanly from the threaded metal part. Great.

I yanked off the bulb, but now the metal part is stuck in there,
so I have a useless fixture. This would be a pain under any
circumstance, but the fact that the socket is recessed makes it
impossible to stick a pair of pliers in there to attempt to unscrew
the metal part.

The housing for the fixture is attached to the socket, so even if
I managed to pry it out, I still would not be able to access the
socket with pliers. I suppose I will have to pull the housing out,
cut the wire, and replace it with a new housing, splicing the wire
coming off the new housing into the cut end.

Am I on the right track here? If so, what do I have to do to remove
the housing. After working at it for a while I didn't get very
far at all. One would think that one has to rip the ceiling to
get that housing out, but I can't believe the system would be that
stupid.

How does one fix a situation like this, without ripping out a big
chunk of ceiling?

Thanks!

kj

--
NOTE: In my address everything before the first period is backwards;
and the last period, and everything after it, should be discarded.



I like the current philosophy. If you didn't pay
much, you got ripped off. If you paid an
outrageous amount but didn't get much service, you
didn't pay enough. I think the basic concept
is, "You can never pay too much for service that
you don't really need."