Advice on Daisy Chaining Light Bulbs Together for Sign Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[dvince86]

Hi All,

Im new to this so please excuse any mistakes or confusion.

I am trying to make a large sign for a school show and they have requested that it has light bulbs on it like the old fashioned game show signs. I have attached an image to try and explain better what I need to achieve.

I have very basic electrician experience and from what I can see online it doesn't seem to complicated to wire them together.

What I cant find a simple answer for is the amount of load. Im hoping to plug these into a mains socket. How do I work out how many light bulbs I can wire up in a series before I overload the circuit?

Are there any glaringly obvious health and safety risks I should be aware of before starting.

The more information I can receive the better

Many Thanks in advance

[ericmark]

You can no longer buy frosted/pearl tungsten light bulbs, so you will have to use LED light bulbs to get the effect.

Putting LED bulbs in series is not a good idea as you have no idea of internal circuit of the bulb, so have to be in parallel, even at 10W each and that is far bigger than you need you could have 280 bulbs before you hit 13A. After 200 bulbs I would be measuring as rated 10W does not mean exactly 10W could be 12W.

I would say it depends on the bulbs you can get cheap, Pound world did some GU10 bulbs at 0.58W each, since you not really interested in light output these would look fine.

But start by looking for cheap bulbs, then price bulb holder, then select cheapest pair bulb and holder.

[dvince86]

Brilliant thank you