I'm rewiring corridor lights, it will have pendants with LEDs or fluorescent bulbs. But could i also add dim lights for night time
- what sort of bulbs?
Decades ago I hotwired a diode across a switch which cut out half the AC signal when switched off, would this work with modern lights?
George
Probably not. Ift its LEDS you could try wiring a 400VAC capacitor in series to limit LED current.
Likely to vary on anything not incandescent ...
it could just carry on at full brightness if the internal Rs and Cs allow it to pull enough current during the half wave that remains
or they might become horribly flickery
or you might end up overheating two out of the four diodes in the lamp's bridge rectifier if they're run close to max
Andy Burns wrote in news:f2f0adFhnm4U1 @mid.individual.net:
Why not have a 2 gang switch where one is on/off and the other gang selects a full brightness fitting and the other gang feeds some sort of minimal brightness luminaire?
Sorry - I mean the other gang to be two-way (as it will be) where one "Way" feeds full brightness and other "way" feeds minimal brightness. It feels a more conventional approach - rather than messing about with fittings.
Why do you need dim lights for night time? Either the corridor needs to be lit, or it doesn't. ("Corridor" suggests non-domestic premises; if you need a nightlight in a house for nocturnal bathroom visits that's different.)
Either have the lights running 24/7 (a 4 watt LED will only cost about ? ?4 a year to run) or have PIR with a long dwell time so the lights are us ually on when people are about.
Owain
yes Derbyborn, a second switch to some sort of minimal brightness luminaire, but what sort are suitable for in a house?
Spuorg it is for upstairs in my house leading to toilets when i have guests [george]
DICEGEORGE wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
Look around for a low Lumen lamp - in a luminaire in which you can parhaps mask some of the light to get what you need.
A nightlight for a nocturnal bathroom visit don't even require anything like 4W. I have an emergency light in my hallway with a green LED to indicate the light is operational/charging. This is sufficiently bright enough to navigate by when everything else is pitch black.
of course
LED come in any power you like. CFL are available down to 3w, ok as nightlighting for a large area
No. There are 2 ways to do this
NT
Our landing has one of those green neon borders on the light switch. And two mains powered smoke alarms with green LEDs. Positively dazzling!
I hate to think what it would do to any kind of power supply in a light. Also, this kind of tthing can create a lot of RF interference on 'odd' loads. As you say it sort of works with ordinary bulbs, and in the past I've also wired them in series to give a similar effect two at a time. Brian
In message , DICEGEORGE writes
Could you not keep life simple and use a plug in LED night light? We have a couple, and they just work.
Some of them even have a PIR, so only come on when needed.
Working out the payback time of the extra cost, against power saved, is left as an exercise for the student.
Chris
Yes, ours does.
Uh oh. OK, assume 8 hours per night, 365 nights, is 2,920 hours p.a.
A standard 60w bulb will burn 160 kWh, so cost, at 12p per kWh, is ?19.20 per annum. An LED night light burns 0.5w, so 1/120th the cost, or 16 pence - is that right???
LED night lights are around a fiver to buy.
A rule of thumb is £1/year per watt that's on 24x7, it's probably slightly under given price rises in recent years.
So a 0.5W light would be 50p/year if left on 24h/day, so 16p for 8h/day is about right.
Try looking on the usual sites for 2W 'vintage' or similar LED lamps. Tend to be 'filament' (COB) and about 2000K, so not glaringly bright at night.
yes I have two, had three, but one burnt out.
for me that was irrelivant as I didn't get them to save money. I got them so when getting up in the night I could go to the toilet without needing to put lights on which I found far too bright for what I needed ju st to go to the loo. i.e I didn't need 3 X 40w spot lights in the bathroom just to have a piss. I also didnl;t need the hallway light up either. Havign them with a PIR also meant even in the dark I didn't have to find th e switch and then cover my eyes because it was too bright.
excellent point whisky-dave, i hadnt thought of that advantage of dim lights: not to get dazzled and losing nightsight in the middle of the night when going for a piss. I'm researching dimmers, different LEDs are incompatible with some trailing edge dimmers because LEDs are not regulated, it seems. [g]
A double lightswitch with a neon in it from one of the switches would be good - is it legal to drill a neon into a lightswitch, what sort would be good for this?
It would probably be necessary to take a blue neutral to the switch for this wouldnt it?
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