CFL bulbs
Have three of them in front of the outside of my house on a hard wired timer. Been there for a couple of years. Today I noticed that when they were off two of them were flickering a little. One more t...
Forum Discussion
ChopperBill wrote:
Well, went out and replaced the one that was flickering and the one that wasn't flickering started flickering. Replaced the other one that started flickering. And the one prior I replaced was flickering. Went around and tighten them all a quarter turn they all stopped flickering. Spooks, I'm afraid to go back and check!
My 30 year old kitchen CFLs started doing the same thing and I played the game of replacing tubes, ballasts and finally the entire setup with LEDs.
CFLs age and when they do they typically become more temperature sensitive and start to flicker. The ballast in the assembly may be going out as well. And of course there's always the problem of poor contacts, especially when used outdoors.
There are benefits to replacing the CFLs with LEDs, especially when used in outdoor areas. LEDs don't emit the wavelength of light that attracts bugs that the CFLs do, so with LEDs you'll find a lot fewer of them buzzing the lights. You can even use brighter LEDs (higher K values) without the fear of bugs.
LEDs do tend to be a little dimmer than the equivalent incandescent bulbs, but I think this is mainly because they are warmer, i.e. lower on the Kelvin scale. From what I've seen a 60w equivalent LED that's about 3200K appears to be dimmer than an incandescent 60w, but a 4000K is about the same.
I also replaced my outside porch lights with LEDs on a daylight sensor. After a year or so I noticed they weren't coming on as early as they used to and it turned out the sensor had gone bad.
