Lighted Switch Flickers
larryiniowa
13 years ago
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DavidR
13 years agoRelated Discussions
Off/on switch light flickering.
Comments (2)Hi Zep, Thanks for the response. I'll take you up on your suggestion. It hasn't flickered at all today. Must be gremmlins. Steve...See MoreLighted 3-way switch causes flourescents to flicker-why?
Comments (3)I don't see any reason it will hurt the switches, and I doubt that it will hurt the fluorescent lamps either, but it certainly sounds annoying. What's happening is that the neon lamps start to conduct at about 90 volts. This voltage is appearing across the ballast with each cycle of the AC mains. The ballast tries to start. But the neon lamp can't pass much current, so the voltage falls to zero and the ballast quits. Then the cycle repeats, ad infinitum. You might find that a small incandescent light in parallel with the fluorescent is enough to make the neon lamps happy and stop the flickering. A 4-7 watt night light, or an even smaller indicator lamp, should be enough. I haven't tried this, though, so I won't guarantee that it will work....See MoreLights flicker, power goes off, wiggling a switch fixes it
Comments (13)Not to scare you, but weird things happen. Last August, my friend started having problems with lights flickering in different areas of his house. It didn't make sense to him, and was getting worse, so he called the power company to see if there was a problem with the lines. A guy from the power company came out and said there was a problem at his circuit box and that my friend should call an electrician. He didn't act like it was urgent, but suggested not waiting too long. Luckily, I had another friend who was able to recommend an electrician -- called him and he said he'd come out and check it the next day. The electrician showed up and apparently told my friend he couldn't believe that the power company didn't cut the power IMMEDIATELY! He said it was terribly dangerous... there was a water leak to the fuse box and a voltage imbalance on sides of the house and at least one of the breakers had fused, so no matter what happened, the breaker(s) couldn't trigger. The electrician called to have the power cut immediately (what an operation that is!) and then proceeded to replace the entire circuit box....See More2 lights on same switch with short occasional flicker
Comments (1)It is likely the dimmer. It might be a loose wire. You could turn off the breaker to the lights, remove the dimmer and make sure the electrical connections are tight. If that doesn’t fix it I would suggest replacing the dimmer with a different style than what you are describing. Perhaps get a dimmer that is LED compatible and replace the bulbs with LED’s when you can....See Morelarryiniowa
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