Old low voltage lighting system - switches stopped working.
 

Hello,
I've lived in my grandparents' old home for over 10 years now and came upon a problem last week with the lighting system. My grandfather was an electrician and when he built the home in the late 60's, he installed a low voltage lighting system (I believe a GE system) for several of the rooms. Last week every switch on the system stopped working and I could not turn the lights off in those rooms. This system has a relay at every fixture as far as I can tell and rocker switches on the walls. I'm guessing that the transformer went bad, but I've been reading a few posts that suggest stuck light switches can sometimes be the culprit. I don't know if this applies to my system, however, and wondered if anyone had any suggestions. I know this system is extremely dated and few people work with them, but any help would be appreciated.

If any of the low voltage switches do not work then most likely the transfomer is shot you will have to find it in few different location depending on the set up it can be in basement or attic or one of the wall in garage or ulity room one of the three locations typically found.

For the transfomer do NOT use standard 16 volt doorbell transfomer the voltage is too low to activie it so you use the 24 volt transfomer ( 40 VA is most common size ) some case you may have two transfomers in there so just give you a head up with it.

The most common relay is GE RR7 or RR5 depending on the switch conferation is.

I will post the photo what it look like real quick so you will know what to look for.

http://www.galesburgelectric.com/fil...ge/d_11805.jpg


The low voltage conductor will useally be outside of the junction box while the line voltage conductors will be inside the junction box. ( this will be little tricky to do the troubleshooting when you do the Line voltage side so make sure the circuit you work on is off first )

Hope that should help you with this one.

Merci,
Marc

Thanks for the quick reply Marc! My father and I worked on the system a little today and have located the transformer. It is in the attic. He had a spare transformer he had ordered several years back, since his house uses a similar low voltage system as well (my grandfather installed both systems). The transformer he has, however, looks slightly different than the one in the attic, but we think it will work. We just want to make sure the wiring is correct. The old transformer has a large black wire and white wire spliced into the main power source and two screws on top of the transformer with 3 black and green wires going to one screw and 2 white wires going to the other screw.

The new transformer is similar and looks like the one in the link below.

http://www.kyledesigns.com/product/R...ansformer.html

Also, I started thinking about changes we have made to the system over the years. Last year, I installed a ceiling fan in place of chandelier lights that were originally on the system and wondered if that could also have any effect on anything. I still used the same relay and rocker switch for it though.

I think it should not affect but I do not have the rating listing with me but IIRC they should handle the motour load without issue like your ceiling fan that don't draw much current at all.

Merci,
Marc