Has anyone had any particularly good or bad experiences with dimmer controlled CFLs? There are a few bulbs I have seen recently which claim to allow dimmer control, but I am skeptical about how well a CFL can be controlled with a dimmer.
Any comments would be much appreciated. Thanks,
Smarty
I wonder also, on cold startup cfls are reddish and my dimmable 4ft T8 go a bit reddish on dimming, not a good color.
I tried a couple and quickly returned to the standard dimmable bulbs. It seems that the dimmable CFL's are pretty much on or off with little control over how well they can be dimmed. The ones I got seemed to either be full on or about a mid level and then off. We had them in our family room where we like a subdued light during the evenings. We could not get the control we wanted and their light output would be different from one bulb to another on the same control.
I bought ONE it cost a lot and didnt dim well, so it got moved to the pole light which is on a light sensor, it was rated for that use too.
within a few months it died, i havent bought a dimble one since.
incidently the regular CFs now appear to work ok on my pole light, they fail perhaps once a year,
but the good news they dont take out the light sensor which is expensive to replace. so its worth it,
the light sensor fries when a regular bulb goes super brite on burn out, i have seen it happen.
I had considered puting the bulb on a contactor fed by the sensor, i got tired of replascing the sensor.........
the current one must be 4 or 5 years old a all time record
I bought ONE it cost a lot and didnt dim well, so it got moved to the pole light which is on a light sensor, it was rated for that use too.
within a few months it died, i havent bought a dimble one since.
incidently the regular CFs now appear to work ok on my pole light, they fail perhaps once a year,
but the good news they dont take out the light sensor which is expensive to replace. so its worth it,
the light sensor fries when a regular bulb goes super brite on burn out, i have seen it happen.
I had considered puting the bulb on a contactor fed by the sensor, i got tired of replascing the sensor.........
the current one must be 4 or 5 years old a all time record
Bob,
Thanks for your reply. I too had an outdoor post lamp with a bulb which failed very frequently.It too has a photoelectric sensor to turn the bulb on and off, and the sensor would blow out when the bulb filament failed.
I ultimately solved the problem years ago, and have not needed to replace the bulb in over 10 years. My solution was to install a "soft-start" diode in the base of the bulb for the total cost of about one dollar.
The diode reduces the power consumed by the bulb by removing a portion of the normal a.c. power, reducing the brightness but also reducing the rapid heating and high burn temperature which causes the filament to fail. The filament temperature and thus the thermal shock is much less of a problem now in the cold climate where I live.
The device I used (and I have a dozen or more of these successfully installed in outdoor lamps) is at:
If you find that the bulb brightness is too low once you install this device (as I also did), then it is very easy to use a bigger bulb.
My original pole lamp had a 60 watt bulb and ran at 100% brightness. It now has a 100 watt bulb running at about 50% brightness and looks absolutely fine.
The solution I describe here will absolutely remove the frequent bulb changing and is dirt cheap.
Smarty
The 100 watt bulb with this is consuming about 58-59 watts - the cooler filament has less resistance.
It appears "half brightness", you must have a good 100W bulb to compare to a lousy 60 watt one. 60 watt "standard" 120V incandescents produce usually 870 lumens. A "standard" 100W incandescent produces 1710 lumens, about 480 lumens with a diode.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
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