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Dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs Jeff 10-17-2007
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Posted by Beachcomber on October 19, 2007, 3:12 am

>
>Same as experience as TKM and Ken. I bought one Philips Marathon
>Classic 65 CFL dimmable flood as a test because I wanted to replace
>the 20 or so I have installed in can lights throughout the house. The
>CFL dimmed fairly smooth until it cut out completely at about the last
>third of the dimmers range. The lamps output was very cool as I
>expected. I took it out after about 30 seconds. My opinion is that
>they suck.
>

The government wants us to use the CF lamps and LEDs and companies
like GE are dramatically scaling down their incandescent bulb
production.

Unless there are some new technology breakthroughs, our dimming days
are going to be over...



Posted by Eric on October 19, 2007, 8:55 am
Well thank you mister doom-and-gloom!

In case you haven't noticed, technological breakthroughs happen all the time.
15 years ago when you wanted to buy a
lightbulb, how many technology choices did you have?

In terms of brightness, I would expect LED's to dim better than CFL's, since
they don't have the need for high voltage to
start/maintain an arc.

There's still the issue of simulating the color change that an incandescent has
when dimmed, but I bet it's not too long
before some clever person teams up several different-colored LEDs with some
control circuitry to give the same effect by
looking at the RMS input voltage and varying the drive to the different LEDs.

Oh and you can blame the government if that's what floats your boat, but I buy
CFLs because they save me money.

Eric Law


>
>>
>>Same as experience as TKM and Ken. I bought one Philips Marathon
>>Classic 65 CFL dimmable flood as a test because I wanted to replace
>>the 20 or so I have installed in can lights throughout the house. The
>>CFL dimmed fairly smooth until it cut out completely at about the last
>>third of the dimmers range. The lamps output was very cool as I
>>expected. I took it out after about 30 seconds. My opinion is that
>>they suck.
>>
>
> The government wants us to use the CF lamps and LEDs and companies
> like GE are dramatically scaling down their incandescent bulb
> production.
>
> Unless there are some new technology breakthroughs, our dimming days
> are going to be over...
>
>



Posted by TKM on October 19, 2007, 9:43 am

>
>>
>>Same as experience as TKM and Ken. I bought one Philips Marathon
>>Classic 65 CFL dimmable flood as a test because I wanted to replace
>>the 20 or so I have installed in can lights throughout the house. The
>>CFL dimmed fairly smooth until it cut out completely at about the last
>>third of the dimmers range. The lamps output was very cool as I
>>expected. I took it out after about 30 seconds. My opinion is that
>>they suck.
>>
>
> The government wants us to use the CF lamps and LEDs and companies
> like GE are dramatically scaling down their incandescent bulb
> production.
>
> Unless there are some new technology breakthroughs, our dimming days
> are going to be over...

There will be plenty of changes in residential lighting during the next few
years, no doubt. I think we'll see improvements in CFL dimming, however,
because commercial fluorescent dimming systems already do a good job -- they
dim smoothly right down to zero output. The problem is that the dimmer
controls we have around today were designed for incandescent lamps. We now
need controls specifically designed for CFLs.

The CFL dimming test that I reported also had a second part which was
dimming an LED downlight (the LR6 unit made by LLF which draws 12 watts).
See http://www.llfinc.com/index.aspx Using the same standard Lutron
dimmer, the LR6 nicely dimmed down to about 3 watts without any significant
color change and then it went out. Our little test group concluded that
LEDs dim better than screw-in CFLs, and with a bit of work on the controls,
LEDs would dim just fine.

TKM



Posted by on October 20, 2007, 1:34 pm
On Oct 19, 3:12 am, inva...@notreal.none (Beachcomber) wrote:
> >Same as experience as TKM and Ken. I bought one Philips Marathon
> >Classic 65 CFL dimmable flood as a test because I wanted to replace
> >the 20 or so I have installed in can lights throughout the house. The
> >CFL dimmed fairly smooth until it cut out completely at about the last
> >third of the dimmers range. The lamps output was very cool as I
> >expected. I took it out after about 30 seconds. My opinion is that
> >they suck.
>
> The government wants us to use the CF lamps and LEDs and companies
> like GE are dramatically scaling down their incandescent bulb
> production.
>
> Unless there are some new technology breakthroughs, our dimming days
> are going to be over...

Well, you can probably delay that by voting for the Republican next
year. But I can't tell you for sure, until we know who it is. One
thing for sure, any one of them is less likely to ram a CFL up your
ass than the Democrat.


Posted by Jay Chan on October 19, 2007, 12:12 pm
> Has anyone tried dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs. How well do the work
> and do they smoothly dim? What brand name did you use?
>
> Thanks,

I bought some dimmable CFLs from Home Depot. I cannot dim them low
enough as comparing to regular dimmable bulbs - meaning that they are
still quite bright when they are supposed to be dimmed. This is OK
with me. But you may not like that.

The other problem is that they are longer than regular dimmable light
bulbs. They are sticking out from the cans of the ceiling fixtures.
When I get the time, I may look into the lighting fixture to see if I
can adjust the height.

Jay Chan


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