I just saw in this morning’s Menards ad that they are available. I’m probably way behind the curve here but I did’nt know they were available. The as mentions 65 watt floods but also mentions that all dimmable CFL’s are on sale.
Tom
I believe there are a few caveats on the wall box dimmer used to operate the lamp. Real old style ones may not work. I fellow at work has been testing some of these at home and with his old dimmer he could only get the lamps to go down about 20% orm so. A new dimmer helped.
Big Red as in Hoosiers? Yes GO!
Beware of the dimmable CFLs…I have seen these in action and there is not a good success rate with them (at least the ones I have used). There are lots of problems with flicker when they are not running at 100% brightness. The new youth building at our church uses dimmable CFLs in these massive fixtures (they look like the light fixtures in a gymnasium) and we can not use them at any setting below full brightness because of the lightning storm effect that is produced. Mind you, there is not a lot of flicker, maybe one or two times every five minutes, but it is consistent and annoying enough that we had to stop using them in dimmed mode. These fixtures use standard 100-watt CFLs by the way; there are about eight of them in each fixture. I would suggest getting just a few and experiment with them before you do a mass installation. Jamie
EDIT: I also believe the dimmable CFLs are considerably more expensive because additional electronics must be used to control the dimming.
I had a similar experience with the cfls. The package states they work with most dimmers, which is of course a joke. The woman I installed them for thought her house was burning down. It would be a great conversation piece though, having modeled a thunderstorm[swg]
I saw them on display at Home Depot. First thing I noticed was the flicker. And I’d assume a display setup for them would be using a compatible dinner. With the current products - not the product to use if you want to dim the lights for night operation. There may be some really expensive ones out there that work better, but those probably won’t be at the big box stores. Technology marches on - maybe in the future they will actually work without the flicker. Or we’ll have something totally different like LEDs.
–Randy
On my HO Siskiyou Line, I use low wattage incandescents so that I can easily dim the lights during an op session, yet not get excessive heat build-up in the room. I have fairly high-end dimmers installed for doing this dimming, and my current layout lighting is very effective.
I’ve done a lot of experimenting with dimmable Compact Florescent Lights (CFLs) and here’s what I’ve found:
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At the lowest lighting levels they will sometimes buzz or flicker. Other times they will work great - the result is not predictable. One time they would dim just fine, then in a few moments during the next dimming test, a couple of the bulbs might flicker intermittently, then the next couple dimming tests would be fine, then on another dimming test one of the bulbs would buzz at the lower settings. This behavior was more or less unpredictable.
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Our eyes are extremely adaptable to low light levels. Although the lights are supposed to be dimmable down to about 10% of their full brightness, I found the dimmest levels just looked like I was viewing a fully lit room through a piece of smoked (gray) glass. The lighting did not feel “almost dark” - it felt more like semi-light - the lights still looked too bright.
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Dimmable CFLs cost 3-10 times the price of ordinary CFLs , and their dimming performance is not very impressive. I judged them unacceptable for my needs.
If you did want to use dimmable CFLs as part of a lighting solution that involves realistic twilight transitions, you should use incandescents as well, both soft white, plus some red and blue bulbs.
The wiring and programming would be fairly complex, but I would see it work like this:
Mid-day: CFLs full on - all other lights off.
Evening: CFLs dimming, soft white incandescents coming up.
Dusk: CFLs off, soft white incandescents dimming, red lights coming up.
Twilight: CFLs off, soft white incandescents off, red lights dimming, blue lights coming up.
Night: Blue lights only, all other lights off.
Nope. Cornhuskers!
Tom