OK. I’m going to test some lower wattage bulbs.
I’d really love for these dimmers to work b/c they’re a fraction of the cost of others. And convincing my husband to lay out $$ for the other dimmers may be tough.
Super bummed b/c this workaround seems to have worked for everyone else that has tried it. I was hoping that there was something we were doing wrong that we could just fix and voila!
The Evolve LRM-AS and LTM-15’s work like a champ with LED’s. No flicker, no resistors need. Just hook them up and go!
;D
[quote=“wseverino, post:142, topic:170342”]The Evolve LRM-AS and LTM-15’s work like a champ with LED’s. No flicker, no resistors need. Just hook them up and go!
;D[/quote]
But much more expensive. Especially for the 3±ways!
It’s sounding like we’ll just have to wait on the dimmers. Anyone want to buy some CA600s?
This thread has been terribly useful. Thanks in particular to TimAlls.
I am about to dive in with the 25W resistors and expect it will work as 10watt incandescents seem to do the trick. But first I thought I would try and see whether anyone had thoughts on the cause of my flickering, because the observed behavior is quite inexplicable.
I completed a major renovation with full gutting and all new electric, and have installed LEDs throughout the entire house. 9 rooms have LEDs on dimmers, anywhere from 1 bulb to 8 per circuit. For the most part, each room is on it’s own circuit at the panel with outlets and lighting on separate circuits. So, the entire draw per breaker at panel is extraordinarily low. Relevant? Maybe.
LEDs are Home Depot Ecosmart 9.5watt (http://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart-6-in-9-5-Watt-65W-Soft-White-2700K-LED-Downlight-E-ECO-575L/202240932) and dimmers are Lutron CTCL-153PDH-WH (http://www.prolighting.com/ctcl-153p.html?gclid=CK-0vZip-LkCFYmf4Aod2BkAYg) for which the Ecosmart bulbs are included in the compatible list.
All LEDs on standard switches, ie, non-dimmable, work flawlessly always.
LEDs on dimmers are unpredictable. Typically they work flawlessly. Sometimes they flicker. Sometimes they work flawlessly and then inexplicably start to flicker when nothing else has happened in the house. Sometimes there is clear interaction occurring across different circuits at the panel. Moving the dimmer from full to half in the kitchen will cause the master bedroom lights to flicker. This behavior is not consistently reproducable, but there is definitely interaction happening across circuits. Putting one dimmer to full often causes the flickering in another room (on a different dimmer and a different panel circuit) to stop flickering. It’s insane.
Shared neutrals could explain interaction, but an electrician cannot find anything wrong with the wiring, and the wiring is all new. Lutron tech support has no idea. The thinking is that I am getting “dirty, spikey” voltage coming into the house, but that does not explain the interaction across circuits. Could the fact that these circuits at panel are drawing next to no watts and that they are all tightly wrapped together as they leave the panel before spreading out across the house come into play? Grasping at straws but cannot explain the cross-circuit interaction?
I have no doubt that putting resistors in all the dimmable circuits will solve the issue as a 10watt incandescent seems to, but I am an energy junkie and the idea of adding 10watts to each circuit of my whole house LED install turns my stomach. I spent big money on all these dimmers and LEDs and made sure they were compatible, so this kind of disgusts me. It also perplexes me.
Any thoughts on the possible cause of this is appreciated. Meanwhile I am going to reluctantly proceed with resistors. Someone please confirm that the 25w 1.5Kohm resistors recommended in this thread only draw an excess 10watts, not 25 watts. Thanks much
this could happen when a lot of loads are on the same mains circuit, like in a apartment building. you could check if all the dimmers are correctly wired as in the neutral is connected to neutral on the dimmers and the fase is connected to fase. see if you have a washing machine or dryer connected, this sometimes causes spikes on the net when they slowing down and don’t have a interference suppression capacitor. they generate electricity when they have no power to the drum and it is slowing down so they need to be disconnected when that happens. as most led-lights are using blockwave fase vs sinus wave they cause a huge impact on the generators in the electricity company. this is going to be some major issue in the future when all people are using led-lights. also a possibility is that the earth-wire is not connected ok and not having 0-48 volts on it.
Status - I have added the resistors to 7 out of my 10 dimmer circuits so far. Flickering problem is solved in 6 of the 7 rooms and is much improved in the 7th, though occasional flickering still occurs much to my great dismay. This room also has the most LEDs of any single dimmer at 9. I will try adding a 2nd resistor to another LED on that circuit. Fingers crossed.
All dimmers are wired correctly, ie neutral to neutral, hot to hot.
There is not a lot of load on the main circuit. I have a plug-in electric vehicle, so on occasion there is a 4kw load for a few hours at a time, but other than that the house is ultra-efficient. Baseline load is about 70 watts at the panel. I’ve had an electrician out who could find no issues with the electrical, but the idea of the earth ground being bad is new.
I guess it doesn’t matter, though. As much as I hate to add the extra load, I am going down this path of adding resistors to all my dimmer circuits.
probably the 9 leds on 1 dimmer are to much for the device. 2nd resistor would make this even worse and is totally not neccesary as 1 is enough to get it past the base load needed for the dimmer.
I too, tried this with my dimmers and dimmable LEDs, but still have the problem of occasional flicker, and even have an LED turn on by itself on occasion. This happens on several circuits of either 2 or 4 bulbs, so I know it is not a one-time issue (same behavior occurs whether I have the resistors in the circuit or not unfortunately). This NEVER happens if I leave one incandescent bulb in the circuit. I don’t really want to change my zwave dimmers, as that is a large expense in itself. And my home has light switches of the traditional type, rather than the more “fashionable” decorator-type switches, which would mean completely changing out all switches to match.
I know I could wire up a small nightlight into the circuit and probably resolve this, but that is another thing to hide and at some point burn out and need replacing, which is not ideal either. If anyone has other ideas, I would welcome them; otherwise I’ll just continue on with my mixed-bulb environment – not ideal, but better than nothing.
This has been quite an enlightening and interesting thread. I wish the manufacturers would acknowledge this issue and provide some sort of solution. I’ve written to a couple, and heard nothing back at all.
You have mixed apples and oranges in this thread.
The reason for Resistors in parallel with the LED/CFL lamps are for Dimmers (Z-Wave) that require a minimum amount of leakage current to power the Z-Wave electronics. Most of these dimmers were designed for Incandescent lights … that would satisfy this need. The Z-Wave dimmers that are designed to have a neutral wire attached to the dimmer do not need this leakage current … and hence do not need the resistors.
The Lutron dimmer is designed to work with LEDs without the need of a neutral wire.
I am not sure what your problem is … it almost sounds like you have a floating neutral. A recording dual recording voltmeter in your Power panel might be interesting as you turn loads on and off.
Thank you for the response, Richard.
I assume the electrician would have picked up on a “floating neutral”, but maybe I’ll get another one in for another assessment. If I have an electrical issue I do not want to simply hide it behind some resistors I tuck away in light cans.
If, as you say, this is apples and oranges and the resistor approach is not needed in my Lutron dimmer scenario, why does the resistor approach solve the problem, for 6 of the 7 circuits done so far at least?
some leds are phase-dimmed and some are puls dimmed. i reckon there is a problem with the length of the pulse, so it’s probably puls dimmed and some of this leds won’t work well with that.
using a load for the lutron is solving this issue a little by adding a little in the puls for dimming but it wont solve the issue. if there is a minimum load needed for the dimmer to work it needs a resistor but like richard mentioned this specific lutron doesnt seem to need one. i dont own a lutron so i wouldnt know without seeing the specs. but im sure the problem lies in the type of dimmable leds u use.
[quote=“Da_JoJo, post:151, topic:170342”]some leds are phase-dimmed and some are puls dimmed. i reckon there is a problem with the length of the pulse, so it’s probably puls dimmed and some of this leds won’t work well with that.
using a load for the lutron is solving this issue a little by adding a little in the puls for dimming but it wont solve the issue. if there is a minimum load needed for the dimmer to work it needs a resistor but like richard mentioned this specific lutron doesnt seem to need one. i dont own a lutron so i wouldnt know without seeing the specs. but im sure the problem lies in the type of dimmable leds u use.[/quote]
I really don’t know why the Lutron doesn’t need it, but I have 1 lutron dimmer controlling 2 small LED recessed light trims without an issue (they are well under the 40w limit of my Leviton z-wave dimmers). It could be the trims I’m using and not the switch, but the dimmer is made for “LEDs”. I plan on taking one of my leviton z-wave dimmers and putting it in place of the lutron to see if it still works without the resistor work around. I’m hopeful that it will work just fine, but realistically I’m not sure it will. I will report back if it does work, but as you said, sometimes these things just work due to the type of LEDs you use regardless of the dimmer (My 2 current Levitons work just fine controlling 6 recessed 9w cams on each circuit, but that is over the 40w minimum for the switches. I also use one that doesn’t use the Neutral and it works fine with LEDs as well).
BTW, I currently use the HomeDepot EcoSmart trims because they 1) Use Cree LEDS and 2) have always worked great on any dimmer I put them on (even non-z-wave ones)
great stuff…
I’ve found it does depend on the bulb used, and how many used.
I’m using GE 45612 Z-Wave Wireless Lighting Control In-Wall Dimmers. These are 2 pole only. You can’t connect a neutral wire.
1st: application is the dining room chandelier with 6 “Feit Electric LED Dimmable CFC Candelabra Base 4.8watt/40watt 300 Lumens (3-Pack)” … This works perfectly.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ED55XT6/
2nd: breakfast nook with 4 of “Philips 423798 13-Watt (65 Watt) BR30 Indoor Soft White (2700K) Flood LED Light Bulb, Dimmable”. This worked with three LED bulbs but not 4. When the 4th was added all four bulbs began to blink off and on. It will need a dummy load resistor.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008NNZSI0/
these bulbs look great (color wise)by the way and slightly brighter than the incandescent 65 watt bulbs
3rd: bedroom overhead light with 2 of “FEIT Electric LED Light Bulb A19 3 Pack 40W Replacement Uses 7.5W 500 Lumens Dimmable” … this was wackiest of all. With 2 LED bulbs installed, when I connected the GE 45612 switch the LED on the switch went blue and everything looked good. When I turned it on, the lights ramped up to 100% and then shut down to about 10%. The LED on the switch was a dim blue and blinking. I had to remove the wire to the switch to reset it.
So, just for fun I added a night lite to the circuit. The lights ramped turned up to 100% and then shut off (0%) and would not turn back on. So 4 watts was not enough of a load. I removed the nightlight and added a string of 10 Christmas C7 bulbs. I then unscrewed them 1 by 1 until the lights shut off. It turns out the 3 C7 lights was the magic number so it looks like a 1.5K Ω load should work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D7Z1Q9E/
4th… kitchen …I’m about to see what happens with 5 “Philips 423798 13-Watt (65 Watt) BR30 Indoor Soft White (2700K) Flood LED Light Bulb, Dimmable” and the GE 45612 dimmer.
RV -
Any update as I am in the final stages of building and the wife wants to know what I am going with as far as bulbs.
You can place an iron core LV Halogen transformer in parallel with the flickering LED and see if it stops it.
Hi all… I’m new to this forum so please forgive me if I ask something stupid or something that has already been answered.
The issue I’m having is with dimmable LEDs and dimmers. I’m using LightwaveRF dimmers (sometimes branded Siemens) and when connected to a single BC22 LED bulb it flickers when turned up and still glows when turned off. After extensive reading I understand that there isn’t sufficient load in the circuit and one solution is to wire a second dimmable LED in parallel to the ‘main’ LED or a low voltage incandescent bulb in the same way. I’ve tried both of these, and they both work (ie the LED dims correctly and switches off completely). But I’m not comfortable with the prospect of hiding bulbs in the ceiling void. LightwaveRF recommend a Danlers 10w RESLOADE resistive load to be wired across the LED bulb but at about the same cost as the dimmer switch (about ?25), this seems like an expensive way of trying to save money. Aurora make a similar device at about half the price but they seem to be out of stock everywhere with no sign of a delivery anytime soon.
Then I had a brainwave. Why can’t I use a transformer designed for low voltage LEDs? Halolite makes a 20-60VA dimmable electronic 240v transformer which is intended to be connected in place of a 240v bulb and have a number of 12v bulbs connected to its output. It’s designed to go into the ceiling void and although I would actually want to connect low voltage bulbs to it in this case, would this work as a dummy load to prevent LED flicker?
Maybe.
But rather than making a mess, just buy the resistor, there are cheaper 10watt resistors out there, or use a different dimmer that is capable of dimming LEDs(much more expensive).
I am running Insteon dimmable switched outlets for my LED rope lights in our home theater and they also will not turn off completely, although they will dim down to 4% of full bright. I am at a loss as what to do. Would it be possible to use a 2 way ac plug and plug the rope lights in one end and a night light in the other to solve the problem? Is there a nice safe way to do this?
I have a GE 45612 dimmer installed in the kitchen, controlling 4 bulbs. This evening I switched the 65W BR30 incandescent with Sylvania 18-Watt BR40 LEDs.
When I have 3 of the bulbs installed and the 4th is the incandescent, the dimmer works great.
When I have all 4 LEDs installed, the dimmer works fine up to about 60%, then 60% and above they all flicker. What I find odd is that most reports of flickering is on low levels, in my case it’s the opposite: low levels of dim are fine, only when i turn up the light then they flicker.
I would most likely install a regular switch instead of the dimmer (we don’t need a dimmer in the kitchen), but would like to know what can be done to make it work?
Thanks!
[quote=“shpitz461”]I have a GE 45612 dimmer installed in the kitchen, controlling 4 bulbs. This evening I switched the 65W BR30 incandescent with Sylvania 18-Watt BR40 LEDs.
When I have 3 of the bulbs installed and the 4th is the incandescent, the dimmer works great.
When I have all 4 LEDs installed, the dimmer works fine up to about 60%, then 60% and above they all flicker. What I find odd is that most reports of flickering is on low levels, in my case it’s the opposite: low levels of dim are fine, only when i turn up the light then they flicker.
I would most likely install a regular switch instead of the dimmer (we don’t need a dimmer in the kitchen), but would like to know what can be done to make it work?
Thanks![/quote]
I believe you need a neutral wire for LED bulbs to dim properly, which the 45612 does not have…
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