"bob haller" wrote in message
...
On Feb 24, 7:18�pm, "Smarty" wrote:
Has anyone had any particularly good or bad experiences with dimmer
controlled CFLs? There are a few bulbs I have seen recently which claim to
allow dimmer control, but I am skeptical about how well a CFL can be
controlled with a dimmer.

Any comments would be much appreciated. Thanks,

Smarty

I bought ONE it cost a lot and didnt dim well, so it got moved to the
pole light which is on a light sensor, it was rated for that use too.

within a few months it died, i havent bought a dimble one since.

incidently the regular CFs now appear to work ok on my pole light,
they fail perhaps once a year,

but the good news they dont take out the light sensor which is
expensive to replace. so its worth it,

the light sensor fries when a regular bulb goes super brite on burn
out, i have seen it happen.

I had considered puting the bulb on a contactor fed by the sensor, i
got tired of replascing the sensor.........

the current one must be 4 or 5 years old a all time record




Bob,

Thanks for your reply. I too had an outdoor post lamp with a bulb which
failed very frequently.It too has a photoelectric sensor to turn the bulb on
and off, and the sensor would blow out when the bulb filament failed.


I ultimately solved the problem years ago, and have not needed to replace
the bulb in over 10 years. My solution was to install a "soft-start" diode
in the base of the bulb for the total cost of about one dollar.

The diode reduces the power consumed by the bulb by removing a portion of
the normal a.c. power, reducing the brightness but also reducing the rapid
heating and high burn temperature which causes the filament to fail. The
filament temperature and thus the thermal shock is much less of a problem
now in the cold climate where I live.

The device I used (and I have a dozen or more of these successfully
installed in outdoor lamps) is at:

http://tinyurl.com/d7augg

and is called a "Power Mizer".

If you find that the bulb brightness is too low once you install this device
(as I also did), then it is very easy to use a bigger bulb.

My original pole lamp had a 60 watt bulb and ran at 100% brightness. It now
has a 100 watt bulb running at about 50% brightness and looks absolutely
fine.

The solution I describe here will absolutely remove the frequent bulb
changing and is dirt cheap.

Smarty