CFL Bulbs And Ceiling Fans

[Mr. Gardebner]

I recently put CFL bulbs in all my lamps, ceiling fans and light sockets. On the ceiling fans there are dimmers. When the fan lights are turned on at the dimmer and then turned all the way up, one fan light stays dim for about an hour, then will start to flicker and go to its normal brightness and does not flicker anymore. The other ceiling fan light flickers the entire time and also makes a buzzing noise. i had a dimmer on the kitchen light also and it would also flicker whenever the light was on. I replaced the dimmer with a simple off and on switch and this solved the problem. I only have the problem where there are dimmer switches installed. Why are the lights having this problem?

[Percival P. Cassidy]

The packaging of most CFLs says that they are not to be used in conjunction with dimmers. Dimmable CFL floods (BR30 or similar configuration) have recently come on the market (Philips is one brand I've seen), but they are expensive.

Perce

[RickH]

Unless the CFL's are the newer "dimmable" types, CFL's are not dimmable, they have to be explicitely labeled as dimmable.

And even the new dimmable ones are not truly dimmable over the entire range of your dimmers. They only dim with maybe the top 60% of the dimmer travel, lower levels and the results are unpredictable with flicker, etc. I have the same issue, 80% of my wall switches are dimmers so I have not been able to jump on the CFL bandwagon except for closet and porch lights.

If the govt does something un-American like make incandescent bulbs illegal, then I will stock up from foreign sources to last the remainder of my lifetime.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

IMO, CFLs are merely a stopgap until higher-output LEDs become available.

Perce

[Jeff Wisnia]

And dimable LEDs ought to be a no brainer.

Jeff

[salty]

Not nearly as easily accomplished as you think, Jeff.

[Boden]

I just bought 1000 gallons of #2 oil to get started this winter...Gasp. The next thing I did was to remove all of the CFLs that I'd installed. I can heat with incandescent bulbs this winter for about the same cost as oil. And, they work with all of my dimmers.

Boden

[Boden]

A simple pulse width controller will do it.

[Jeff Wisnia]

I dunnno, you may be correct. This supplier says it can be a so-so thing when using conventional pulse width varying dimmers.

But I'm reasonably sure that compatible dimmers will become available when LED bulbs really take off.

Jeff

[larry]

Good, build us one to look at!

Remember, the power is from the AC line passing thru a two wire dimmer which usually needs a 5 watt minimum resistive looking load just to work. Dang current mode solid state stuff.

;-)

-- larry / dallas

[Don Klipstein]

Unless you spend a lot of time in your closets, CFLs are likely to be uneconomical there.

There is an incandescent ban coming up to be implemented in stages in

2012 and 2014. However, there are enough exceptions to make a set of loopholes wide enough to route the New Jersey Turnpike and maybe also the Mississippi River through.

Paul Eldridge posted these exceptions, I believe in alt.home.repair on January 18 2008 in article .

I have these exceptions at:

- Don Klipstein (

[salty]

No, it won't.

[salty]

The most reliable dimming at this point is to have an array of LED's and make it so you can use varying portions of the array.

The delta from no light to full brightness is very short for LED's. That makes effective dimming tricky at best.

[Claude Hopper]

Just use regular bulbs with dimmers.

[Don Klipstein]

Where do you get that idea?

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])

[Mr. Gardebner]

I found a link to one type of dimmable cfl on home depots page here

is it that it is not energy star compliant?

[salty]

Well, Don, I think you'll find that when you try to use a dimmer with an LED, it's far from linear. You'll have to turn the dimmer up about half way, and then the LED will come on, but it will not be dim, it will start out at about half brightness. Then moving the dimmer a very short amount (with a very steady and precise hand) you will go from that stage to full brightness.

Try it, and you'll see.

[Jeff Wisnia]

I believe you on that, because commonly available dimmers aren't exactly compatible with the relatively low currents drawn by LED bulbs, particularly when you're trying to run them "dimmed down".

But, I still feel it won't take rocket scientists to design dimmers which DO work well with LED bulbs. But then, those dimmers might not work too well with incandescents.

I remember visiting the Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Massachusetts and seeing good sized wall mounted variacs used for light bulb dimming in some of the rooms in that gorgeous place.

and

Jeff

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Wed 10 Sep 2008 02:34:20p, Jeff Wisnia told us...

IIRC, either Lutron or Honeywell marketing some type of variac as a dimmer control back in the 1950s. We had one installed in our family room to dim all the recessing lighting. I'm sure it was a variable transformer and not an electronic dimmer.

[Jeff Wisnia]

(Good thing I'm a guy, not a girl)

That first hyperlink in my previous post needs a period at its end. (......Jr.)

For some reason my browser didn't pick up the period.

So if you clicked on it and Wiki said "no way Jose", and didn't give you the "John Hayes Hammond Jr." page, try adding a period to the end of what's in your browser's address bar.

Computers...They do what they're told to do, not what you want them to do.

Jeff Wisnia wrote: