CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 We're getting our house ready for a reunion of sorts with my 4 older brothers and families. As we're on the back porch refinishing wooden patio furniture my wife decides that we're long overdue for patio lighting. String lights to be exact. OK, no problem, I'll research it to death and order something. I found a 52' stringer with 24 sockets. That should be plenty. Next LED bulbs. I purchased 24 dimmable S14 socket vintage style LED bulbs. If I'm going to dim them I'll need a dimmer. The one I found was rated for LED, CFL incandescent and halogen. Everything should work right? Hanging the light string took about 4 to 5 hours. The string is not supposed to support it's own weight rather be supported and hung at each bulb socket. Most of the sockets could be attached to the aluminum beams but there were 2 spans that had to have guy wire installed for the strings to be hung from. Everything went up fine and when I plugged it in everything lit up as it should. All was great till I tried the dimmer. The dimmer has a slide that travels about an inch and a half. Only the top quarter of an inch or so actually did any dimming. If you could finagle the switch to the tiny area that gave you the proper amount of dimming the lights would flicker or pulsate. Crap. The next day I spent talking to the place I bought everything, the bulb manufacturer and 2 different dimmer manufacturers with absolutely no luck. it seems that LED bulbs and dimmers are very particular with who they interact with. This isn't going to work. The next day I did a bunch of reading and decided to try something. I bought one 11 watt incandescent appliance bulb with the same base type and shape of my LED bulbs. There was one bulb socket at the end of the run that wasn't too noticeable so I swapped out the LED for the 11 watt incandescent bulb. It actually worked! I guess the rheostat needs a certain load or needs to see some sort of return voltage to function properly. It will go from full bright to a barely visible glow now with no flickering and the whole span of the slider is now usable. Hopefully this will help someone out who runs into a similar issue. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 Awesome! Probably, since an LED has a turn on voltage, the incandescent bulb does the trick. Depending on the wattage, a certain value of resistor would also probaly work. I blew up some LEDs a long time ago... had them connected to a power supply. Truned up the voltage until the lit up... by going BOOM! A 300 ohm resistor on one leg took care of the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators dtel Posted June 12, 2018 Moderators Share Posted June 12, 2018 I had no idea about the one incandescent bulb. I knew/read some dimmers do not work well with LED's, I read this after I replaced some bulbs on a dimmer switch, I had no problems, guess I got lucky ? So when I went to add some lights to the pond edge by the bar I just bought a regular dimmer and 3 65 watt equivalent dimmable LED's, it works fine for the last year. ? So is there a problem with certain dimmer switches or certain bulbs ? No incandescent bulbs here in years but still a couple of the curly fluorescent in rarely used places, mostly because when we switched, I still have about 15 still working curly fluorescents left over. Patio should look nice lit up like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 Excellent troubleshooting and solution. Hats off to you. Dimmers are not rheostats as you have discovered. They are phase control fired triacs. And they don't play well with LED type bulbs usually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 7 minutes ago, dtel said: So is there a problem with certain dimmer switches or certain bulbs ? Definitely. If you go to a website that sells LED bulbs they'll normally list compatible dimmers for the individual bulbs. Dimmer manufacturers will list compatible bulbs on their web site as well. All the dimmers I looked at only went up to testing 8 bulbs per dimmer. It seems that there needs to be some sort of standard that they should all adhere to but they all have their own methods to skinning the cat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 8 minutes ago, babadono said: Excellent troubleshooting and solution. Hats off to you. Mostly dumb luck and not wanting to give in. 9 minutes ago, babadono said: They are phase control fired triacs. I thought everyone knew that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 11 minutes ago, babadono said: And they don't play well with LED type bulbs usually. I thought that if a dimmer switch advertised that it was rated for LEDs that it would actually work with LED bulbs but that's not always the case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 3 minutes ago, CECAA850 said: Mostly dumb luck and not wanting to give in. And that's exactly what it takes most of the time “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opus Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 I have the same/similar light string on my deck. I don't have a dimmer on mine, just 11 watt incandescent bulbs in each socket. It provides a very pleasant glow that doesn't overwhelm the night. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 Yep, if you try enough stuff eventually you'll find something that works. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 Just now, Opus said: I have the same/similar light string on my deck. I don't have a dimmer on mine, just 11 watt incandescent bulbs in each socket. It provides a very pleasant glow that doesn't overwhelm the night. I think we're going to like these as well. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 Good to know. You fooled the dimmer switch, and now the whole string is happy. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 25 minutes ago, Gilbert said: Good to know. You fooled the dimmer switch Yea, easy to do, it wasn't very bright. That was for @Marvel or @DizRotus 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators dtel Posted June 12, 2018 Moderators Share Posted June 12, 2018 Did you do this today, just wondering if you had a chance to see it at night ? 50 minutes ago, babadono said: They are phase control fired triacs. Had to look that up had no idea and now just a slight idea. A triac is used to control an AC load, just like a transistor can be used to control a DC load. It is drawn like a couple of diodes in each direction which are then triggered to turn on. They will turn off when the current drops below a certain threshold. So if you just want it on or off you leave the signal on or off and at the next zero-crossing of the AC it will be in that state. You can also get fancy and turn it on only sometimes, which is where the microprocessor programming comes in. Once you have a zero cross detector you can then turn it on in a "gentle" manner as well as keeping trac of percentages on/off if you are trying to reduce the power or control a speed by leaving it off for some cycles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 36 minutes ago, babadono said: And that's exactly what it takes most of the time “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge lmao. What was he doing leading up to the great depression? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 17 minutes ago, dtel said: Did you do this today, just wondering if you had a chance to see it at night ? I actually got to try it last night. An added benefit is that now I'll be able to see the grill when I bbq after dark. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 9 minutes ago, oldtimer said: lmao. What was he doing leading up to the great depression? Prolly livin' it up. It was the roaring 20s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 It's weird that I'm only now finding out about our reunion. I thought for sure I was still in your will under "sound equipment". 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 7 minutes ago, Thaddeus Smith said: It's weird that I'm only now finding out about our reunion. I thought for sure I was still in your will under "sound equipment". It's a reunion, not a funeral. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 3 minutes ago, CECAA850 said: It's a reunion, not a funeral. Noted. I'm a benefactor, not family. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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