The New Hotness

As a temporary expedient while awaiting more outlets in the basement, I screwed several hundred watts of LED strip lighting to the floor joists so I could see where I was going:

The switch seemed to run warm, which I attributed to being snuggled up against one of the LED strips, eventually became intermittent, and finally failed with the lights out.

Prying apart the snapped-together case destroyed it, but that didn’t really matter when I saw the innards:

The “intermittent” action came from the melted post on the switch actuator at the top of the photo. The “warm” came from the barely crimped black wire on the right side of the switch, which *might* have had half a dozen strands caught in the flattened crimp triangles.

I replaced it with an identical switch from the assortment that came with the lamps. That one seems to run cooler, although I doubt the crimps are really up to any reasonable quality standards.

In addition to adding basement outlets & lighting circuits, the rest of the house has some electrical wiring peculiarities; the kitchen microwave really shouldn’t share a circuit with the dining room lights.