I have this curly 23 W light bulb in the kitchen. After I turn the switch off, this bulb blinks about every two seconds for eight times before going off while the other three bulbs, all LED, also controlled by the same switch, behave normally. Is this bulb haunted?
What happens if you move the bulb to other positions in the circuit? What happens if you put an incandescent bulb in the circuit?
Do you have an illuminated light switch?
Is this a new occurrence? When did it start? What changes were made?
Many times this is due to the circuit inside the CFL charging up, even when the bulb is off
Yes. I do have an illuminated light switch. Not sure when it started. I just noticed it.
I swapped it with one of the three LED bulbs. When I screwed in this bulb and the switch was off, it blinked once. Seems like I'm getting free electricity, albeit not much.
DAGS
There are lots of hits for flickering and flashing CFL's when illuminated switches are used. It's a known issue.
Seems like ditching the CFL for an LED would be the easy solution. CFL's start out ugly and get dim and yellowy over time anyway.
So, what if he installed some sort of surge or arc suppressor in the box where the problem light is? The ones I remember would be small enough to fit in the box.
Why not just use another LED? I could have gone to store bought an LED and installed it in half the time that this thread's been alive.
At a minimum I could have tested it with another LED from another fixture.
Bottom line question: Why is the OP using 3 LEDs and 1 CFL? (I've asked...let's see if he answers)
It's not a surge problem, it's that an X10 switch or a lighted switch still pass a very small current through the load when the switch is off. They have to in order to power the light or the X10 circuits, without a neutral. Some low power loads, that's enough to make it partially light up. But it's usually LEDs that are the problem, not CFL, but I suppose it depends on the exact design of the power supply. Since LEDs work for him, simple solution is to just use those, better anyway. Could relocate the CFL if they want to.
Also it would be safer. CFLs have a vaccuum and the tube sprays glass if you drop it. LEDs have air (and they bounce a bit, I've cut one open to see and that wasn't easy. Tough plastic.)
It's a distress call from the night-shift employees where the bulbs are made.
I think 8 blinks means Send pizza.
No, I googled it and it means "Bulb explosion imminent"!!!!! Be careful.
CFL is the one that hasn't burnt out.
And it may take a long, long time to do that. Often they just get dimmer and dimmer and sometimes yellow. The dimmer and dimmer part often goes unnoticed as it's a gradual thing and the user just gets used to it.
For the cost of an LED, you'll get even light from all bulbs and the flashing will stop.
Story time: My daughter recently bought a house. The basement was lit with 4 individual pull chain fixtures, each containing a CFL. The CFL's were so dim and yellowy you could barely see. We know they used the basement because the listing had pictures of a table with a computer on it, an old easy chair, a rug etc. With the dark red floor and dim lights it felt like a dudgeon. On move-in day we replaced the CFL's with 100W equivalent LED's. What a difference $15 worth of bulbs can make.
In my last house, over time it was all LED. I've been in this house 3
1/2 years and it was built with all LED. I've never had to replace one.
My house just turned 3 years old and was also built with all LED bulbs. Many are flush mount and those are all still fine, although we don't like the 2700K 'soft' color temp. Others are A19-style, and I've had to replace about 6-8 of those. I took two apart and the failure was the same in both - there's a small circuit board inside that does AC->DC rectification and voltage reduction and there was a burned trace on that board. After jumping it, the light works again, but by that time the 'globe' or whatever it's called has been removed, destroyed in the process. None of the replaced bulbs have failed so far.
Lighted switches do pass a small current through the light circuit. There is a filter capacitor in the CFL that charges up, and will fire the lamp when it reaches the CFL power supply start up voltage. There is not enough leakage current through the lighted switch to sustain the lamp, so it will just blink. Some times if you wait long enough it may blink again intermittently. This can happen with LED bulb power supplies too.
Since that first day "bulb swap" I've rewired the basement so that a single switch turns on four 4' LED fixtures. No more walking from pull-chain to pull-chain. She also painted the dirty, peeling, off-white walls white-white and the nasty dark red floor a light blue. Trimmed out the windows, new curtains, etc.
The progression from dark and dingy to bright and cheery was interesting to watch. It went from "I hate going down there" to her workout space and a place for her crafts projects. And it all started with a few LED bulbs. ;-)
That was what had happened to the CFLs in my back bathroom. They were getting dim and yellowy. Replacing them gave much better and brighter light.
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