Light fitting smells fishy.

[supapapa]

Why?

[AlBags]

It haddoccured to me that it cod be a burning connection.
T hake the switch off and tighten the connections/check and have a trawl around! : )

[bibblebub]

if someone were sad enough to use puns then they might suggest electric eels

[AlBags]

quite.

[rojash]

But seriously.. older light fittings were made of a material which started to smell fishy when warm, as it started to break down. I would replace it now, before it catches fire.

[AlBags]

Bakelite .. but it does not smell fishy when hot.

[rojash]

I wasn't talking about Bakelite...

[Hopkirk]

We get this when we put some types of light bulbs in.

The last time was when I bought a 4 pack of Homebase golf ball shaped pygmy bulbs. They all stank of fish when hot - disgusting.

Have you changed the bulb recently?

[jno]

possibly old plasticky fittings? We used to have that trouble occasionally and replaced them with ceramic ones. Also, sometimes the bulbs didn't go in quite straight and so heated one side of the fitting more than the other. (They still worked, but were a millimeter or two off centre.)

[scotman]

I seem to recall that some early plastic fittings were made from some sort of urea based plastic. They could smell a bit when hot.

[rojash]

^^^ Yeah, that's what I was think of, just couldn't recall it at the time.