I have an annoying bedside lamp with a flexible neck through which the electric cables run. From time to time, it won’t switch on, which is a nuisance because it’s the only light source in the bedroom. If I bend the neck around a bit, it lights up, but with great difficulty, and twice now I’ve given up and plugged in another lamp, then after lights out, the bloody thing has somehow managed to switch itself on 20 minutes later, in the dark, by itself - is there poltergeist around?
IKEA made some lights that sound like those described. They used a wall-wart power supply to drop the mains voltage to 5V for the wires that ran through the stem and powered the light. I wonder if this is what the OP has?
If the cables in the flexible neck were carrying mains, I suspect there would have been much more dramatic signs of failure - probably including flashes, bangs and fire. And probably electrocution…
It just seems silently stubborn, refuses to cooperate. What is curious to me is that when I give up and plug in another lamp, it lights up, 20 minutes later, in the dark, when I’m trying to get to sleep. The switch was obviously in the on position. But why the delay?
This has happened twice now.
I believe the lamp to be made from plastic and is quite sturdy.
An alternative possibility - the switch may have some kind of lubricant that has gone stiff, and although you can move the rocker, it takes time for the contacts to meet.
If changing the bulb doesn’t solve the problem… then (to me at least) it’s clearly electrical contacts/wiring which is at fault. An intermittent fault can be dastardly difficult to locate so I would rewire from start to finish (only the lamp and its plug, not the entire house)…
Personally, I can’t sleep if electrics are twitchy… but that’s because I’ve witnessed some cases where a simple “twitch” has resulted in disaster.
I certainly would unplug and leave it to one side… until I had time to re-do the necessary.
Or repair it, have to move away from the throw it at the first issue routine.
Those puny low power plugs often seem to rattle into the sockets as only the tips are the contact point and the thinner plastic pin is not a good fit.
There’s an electrical shop in the village where something like this can be looked at and repaired, but they takes months! But will see what they can do. Don’t like wasting something that could easily be repaired by a professional.
Just a thought… more and more, one sees places where they take-in electrical goods for mending and/or recycling… certainly our dechetterie has such a section…
so if one is bent on chucking-away and replacing… this might be a good route…
The lamp has two fluorescent tubes - I suspect that it has an electronic starter which is failing, often the problem is that they have a switch mode power supply which takes a long time to kick in - either because they have a “slow start” NTC device which has drifted up in resistance (making the slow start very slow) or the “bootstrap” capacitor/resistor have failed (which can cause the same symptom or can cause that thing where the lamp cycles on and off every few seconds).
On an only loosely related note I have started to have to play a game with the lights in the cellar. The increased damp down there already caused failure of the original electronic starters so I bought replacements (this time choosing ones which pre-heat the filaments as they vastly increase tube life).
When we arrive they tend not to work, I assume there is just enough moisture on the PCB to prevent the electronics starting up for some reason. If they start up they warm up and the problem is solved.
So, they get switched on and left a few minutes. Then they have to be switched off and on again - this time, if I am lucky the tube will strike for a few seconds, rinse & repeat five or six (or ten or twenty) times - each time the tube will strike for a bit longer until eventually it remains lit; it’s usually OK for the remainder of the visit (though I might have to do a “mini re-match” the 2nd morning).
