LED Pot Lights

Thread Starter

rstylr

Joined Oct 7, 2025
2
If you look around for LED pot lights, they all appear pretty similar. You can get 4" 9W LED pot lights from many, many sources. The all look the same.
I have dozens of these lights in my house and dozens in my horse barn, both from the same source. I have lost one in my house in the past four years and have replaced almost every pot light in my horse barn.

The lights in the barn are in a ceiling and are in strings of twelve on their own 15A breakers. The strings are less than 100 feet long.
Twelve 9W lights would draw about 1 amp. The voltage drop, assuming that all of the lights were at the end of the 14 gauge wire (which they are not), would be 0.5%. The interior of the barn never sees rain or temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius or above 27 degrees Celsius.

The attic above the agricultural PVC ceiling is insulated.

When I opened the power supply on one of the failed pot lights, one of the capacitors had a swollen case.

Why are these lights failing? The temperatures are not extreme. The 100 foot lines shouldn't be noisy, there are only a dozen LEDS on them. I'm stumped.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
27,510
It may be that the voltage to the lights in the horse barn is excessive. A poor common connection in the breaker panel could certainly cause that condition.
BUT it might also be that the problem is caused by a higher humidity level. I have observed that cause on 48 inch LED "tube lights" in a restaurant installation. (I am asked to solve problems in many areas).
There also exists the possibility of a poor quality production batch of those lights. There are sites that sell factory quality rejected products.
 
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