1st Fixture Nuts Are Melting...any Ideas Why?

ericjurin

Hey guys, my first fixture on my run seems to be melting the wires at the fixture connection. I checked the voltage and I am at 11.3. Cant figure it out....stupid question- do I need to match up any + and - from the common at the tap vs from the fixture? Unless I have lost my mind, I don't think that exsist in this trade does it?

I am running a 600w Unique and using Vista Fixtures.

Thanks

Eric

ericjurin

I have had experience with copper moon and Vista. And, for kicks, some crud malibu 50w spots.

The truth is, the Malibu spots have outperformed my Vistas. Copper Moons are great as well. The malibus have a pretty gross color of light so I would not use them as professional grade, ever. I noticed when my neighbor did his house (and I tried to tell him I was a pro and could get him industrial grade fixtures and he didnt listen) that his are still going and have outperformed the vistas I have in my yard.

I had some big problems with vista as they had a big batch of fixture done overseas with bad sockets. They replaced them all for me with no problems since......just curious as to everyone elses feedback.

eric

Unique

Unique transfomers are not polarity sensative, you need to be polarity concious when running a loop system. If you are melting connections it is usually due to a short of some sort. A lose wire nut connection will arc and melt your wire nuts down. Get your amp probe and do some testing at the connection. It should expose any shorts and allow you to then troubleshoot and fix.

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MSjogren

It sounds like you are talking about your main splice connection to that fixture. If so then brand has nothing to do with that problem.

I had this issue a while back too. A customer of mine likes to tinker and add lights when he feels like it. He put too many high wattage lights on a run of wire and the splices melted. The run was originally set up for a certain amount of watts.

The wire eventually melted in certain spots too. I ended up running another wire for the extra lights and solved the problem.

You may have only 11.3 volts at that fixture, but if the wire run is over loaded with wattage it will over heat. You may be drawing too many amps for that run.

Consider your gauge of wire and total wattage for that run.

Let us know what you find.

I just read that this was a week ago. Did you get it figured out?

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