My youngest son, bought his first house in the fall of 2017. He has been busy fixing, redecorating, and remodeling things to his liking.
One of those little annoying things was, there is this room in the basement, that the ceiling fixture "flickered" when the switch turned it on. He said, that he put a new LED bulb in it and the problem remained. So, about 4 weeks ago, I replaced the ceramic light fixture and it seemed OK at that time. Problem persisted. So, Dad went down to that room again, loaded for bear.
Sidebar---- His basement, unlike the majority of the homes here in Michigan, is wired with EMT thinwall metal tubing.
So, I discovered that a slight tapping on the EMT made the light go on/off or flicker. So, I am thinking, new bulb, new fixture, it must be the switch. Opened up the switch box and jumpered the light switch out. Hmmmm, no difference. Traced down the power source from a Junction Box. Went to the Junction Box and direct wired the power source to the Fixture Circuit. No difference. By now, my son is thinking there has to be something with the THHN in the EMT from the Junction Box to the Light Fixture Box. I am skeptical. So, we rip out the THHN and run new Romex. No difference. So, new bulb, new fixture, new wire and problem persists. So, I grabbed my Trouble Light and removed the bulb out of that (knew that bulb was good because we are using it) and told my son to swap out bulbs............WhaLa.........Light works.....No flickering.
Now after spending two plus hours chasing something that we thought was the issue, turns out we had "tunnel vision" and overlooked that fact that the new LED bulb would be bad.
Reminds of working on our Cub Cadets, often we over think the problem and overlook the simple things, to check first.
