I bought some compact fluorescent flood bulbs to replace the recessed bulbs in my kitchen as they burn out. So far I've got 2 installed.
Both of them have this problem. About half the time they work fine. They have the normal delay that compact fluorescent's have, but that's fine. The other half of the time, only the very upper part of the bulb lights. Then the light slowly "creeps" down the spiral. Takes about 5 minutes!
I have had similar effects, from the bulb being cold. This varies with the temperature of the bulb.
However, in my experience spirals usually warm up in half a minute to a minute.
Now, another issue for compact fluorescents in recessed ceiling fixtures: They may overheat and short life may result. It is recommended to use ones that are specifically rated to take the heat of recessed ceiling fixtures. The Philips SLS ones of 15, 20 and 23 watts (though not the dimmable one) are rated for such use. Otherwise, keep your fingers crossed - they may or may not burn out early.
Just a note that different brands behave differently in this regard. I have some that turn on instantly, and others that take a minute or so to warm up.
That's strange. I would expect the motion sensing part to be unrelated to the load. I would think it doesn't see the load at all, until it turns on, and then it should work with any load.
Motion sensor lights often rely on electronic switching means that I suspect requires the load to draw current both significantly exceeding zero and in the same direction as that to be motivated by the line voltage whenever the motion sensor electronics give a turn-on signal to the usual triac.
Much of the time, an incandescent load in parallel with the compact fluorescent load fixes things - although this is not guaranteed. The triac may be triggered by motion sensing at a moment when it will have to spend possibly 1/20-1/10 of a millisecond conducting ballpark 100 amps to charge up the filter capacitor in a usual electronic-ballasted CFL, or in the case of a magnetic ballast deal with unfavorability to current flowing in same direction as applied voltage early in a half cycle when a half cycle is defined by/within applied voltage. You may get away with it, sometimes, or maybe for some significant amount of time - but usage of electrical equipment in ways other than as directed can be a *BAD THING* should a fire start or if anything goes BLAMMO, even if the bad results that occurred during "abuse" were unrelated to "abuse" and would have occurred during normal use. For a major example, fire insurance companies may give major grief should a fire start at electrical equipment being used other than as directed, even if the electrical equipment in question went BLOOEY for a reason other than being abused/misused.
So, I would not use CFLs with motion sensor lights unless the CFLs are rated for use with dimmers, electronic switching devices, and the like.
Heck, I would avoid usage of CFLs on motion sensor lights even if only due to low ontime per year and low ontime per start - both of which disfavor economic advantage of most CFLs, and 1 of which (low ontime per year) disfavors economic advantage of all CFLs in most locations and most CFLs in at least pretty much all locations.
I favor CFLs and I light my home with them, I like them, but I feel that exaggerating their favorability works against them due to exaggerations being known by enough people to be significant enemies should enough be offended by exaggerations.
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