Silent trailing edge dimmer/bulb compatibility

Hi. I'm thinking about replacing 4 60W R63 spotlights, currently controlled by a wall mounted dimmer, with 4 11W dimmable LED bulbs of the same format .

The Led bulbs I'm after are from TLC Direct and product spec says that they are compatible with "silent trailing edge" dimmer controls. My dimmmer is a standard Wickes job, about 2 years old. I suspect that it does not have f ancy internals beyond what is needed to control incandescent bulbs. Any ide a what might happen if I hook up the LEDs to this dimmer? No start/no dim/p oor response, or fine?

A short while ago, I fitted different LED bulbs to another dimmer controlle d circuit and they seem to work fine.

Cheers.

Terry.

Reply to
terry.shitcrumbs
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Flickering - bad flickering, almost certainly. Some LEDs can cope but if yours say "training edge" you need a trailing edge dimmer.

Varilight Pro dimmers are good and a trivial swap.

Reply to
Tim Watts

BTW I have some of these:

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and they are brilliant - MUCH brighter than the filament bulbs they replaced.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Trailing edge dimmers aren't new. I have 4 250w grid ones (MK grid, but the dimmers may be Home Automation) dating back to about 1990 in one room, and dimmable LEDs work with those OK. The LEDs are 60w equivalents in table lights, so not a high load either.

Current Wicks dimmers are also OK with LEDs. Not sure if and when they changed, them though.

Try and see. I don't thing you'll damage either.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I had trouble with MK's supposedly LED compatible dimmer and some ledhut GU10s, changed to varilight which works properly, and have now fitted two more of them as I've changed lamps over to LED.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Dave Plowman (News) explained on 23/01/2017 :

A freind had 5 LED lamps, his dimmer would work loaded with 3, but 5 caused flicker and soon all those lamps blew. Might have been the lamps, but a new LED dimmer and a set of new lamps work fine.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Thanks to all for the advice. I'm still not sure whether to suck it and see , or buy standard filament replacements. The LED bulbs are 9 quid a pop and if I end up having to change the dimmer, it becomes a 50 quid job. Standar d filament bulbs are a quid and a half each and I guess I get through 4 per year on that circuit.

I think I've talked myself out of LEDs!

Terry.

Reply to
terry.shitcrumbs

On average, how many hours a day are the lights on?

Reply to
Andy Burns

Time will tell, I am just about to fit Scolmore dimmers at a property I am working at.

I wanted to fit Varilight.

Reply to
ARW

I'd guess that the lights are on 6-7 hours a day in winter, reducing to aro und 3 hours a day in summer.

My beef isn't so much with the energy bills (water is my single largest uti lity bill, which seems a bit crazy for a 2 person household), but the heat from all the lighting in the kitchen winds me up. On a mild day, with the o ven on, the extra heat from all three sets of tungsten filament lights/fitt ings present can make the kitchen really hot.

I'm part way through converting one kitchen light fitting that has 5 golf b all bulbs (LED replacement for each TF bulb that blows) and the focus of th is thread is the second fitting/set of lights. The third set will have to s tay as they are because there are no LED replacements available.

Cheers.

Terry.

Reply to
terry.shitcrumbs

Which models? Looking at two or three of their brochures the phrase that keeps cropping up is "largely for use with Tungsten, Halogen and Low Voltage lamps"

Also the 10 or 20 year warranty includes the wriggle-words "Electronic Parts 1 Year" which isn't very re-assuring for a dimmer.

Reply to
Andy Burns

If you say 5 hours a day, that's your £50 LEDs plus dimmer cost saved in the first year (£1 electricity every four hours they're on, plus £6 per set of replacement lamps) and you get your heat reduction thrown in.

Reply to
Andy Burns

I doubt the OP's lighting uses that many watts.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

I had a similar problem but mine worked OK with two LED spotlights and two

35w halogens which dimmed OK but the LEDs flickered a bit and the range of brightness was limited when I put 4 LEDs spotlights in it got worse in that there's was less dimmable range, so I put the 2 halogen spotlights back in after 10mins or so it seemded that the face plate on the dimmer was warmer than I would expect, so I removed it and there was a faint odour that you get from burnt components, so I just biined the whle dimmer and brought a t railing edge which workled perfectly with 2 LEDs and 2 halogen and when I r eplaced the 2 halogen with 2 LEDS it still worked perfectly so I can only a ssume it was the dimmer that wasn't upto dimmer LEDs. SO glad I brought a proper dimmer rather than f*ck about with discete compo nent swapping which wouldn't have been any good anyway.
Reply to
whisky-dave

round 3 hours a day in summer.

tility bill, which seems a bit crazy for a 2 person household), but the hea t from all the lighting in the kitchen winds me up. On a mild day, with the oven on, the extra heat from all three sets of tungsten filament lights/fi ttings present can make the kitchen really hot.

The overall heat didn't worry me it was teh way the heat tarnished the whit e ceiling and hearing the expansion clicks from the lights after 10mins ma de me think about the lifecycle of the bulbs, which is why I put a dimmer i n the kitchen to save the life of the halgons and to stop the scorch marks.

But I didn't rush out and change all my spotlights as they blew, over the p eriod of 5 or so years my plan was to replace them with dimmable LEDs as th ey blow.

ball bulbs (LED replacement for each TF bulb that blows) and the focus of this thread is the second fitting/set of lights. The third set will have to stay as they are because there are no LED replacements available.

Reply to
whisky-dave

If there are any signs of distress, I'd not use it like that.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

4 in mine. But it is a kitchen/breakfast room. Even the florries under the cupboards dim. ;-)
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

LED certainly changes that. They barely run warm in my spotlight fixtures whereas the original 60W bulbs would make the whole thing too hot to touch. In winter I miss the thermal radiation from them though.

The other big benefit is that unlike classical spotlights the failure of a single lamp does not take the entire house lighting circuit down whereas a kitchen spotlamp failure did about half the time.

That is a brilliant way to *shorten* the lifetime of halogen bulbs - they will truly be halogone if you habitually run them dimmed. The whole purpose of halogen lamps is that the halogen scavenges tungsten off the cool bulb envelope and redeposits it on the hot filament. If they are not run more or less flat out most of the time then bulb lifetime will be compromised as the filament thins by evaporation.

Ordinary filament bulb lifetime can be hugely extended at the cost of efficiency by inserting a series resistor to limit the cold surge current and operating power down by ~10-20% 100R 5W works OK for the bulbs that go into electric fires (though today LED wins there too).

It makes sense to swap out all the most used lights sooner and use up the power hungry ones in places that are less frequently lit. This usually correlates quite well with most used bulbs blowing soonest.

Main aim for me was to get rid of slow to start when cold elderly CFLs.

Reply to
Martin Brown

I'll let you know

Reply to
ARW

Reducing rms filament voltage has far more effect on life than the halogen cycle, so it still extends life.

5w isn't enough. Power resistors are generally rated 1000hr life at rated power, and that's if anything slightly over that.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

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