ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area dimming switches

I have been told that an incandescent dimmer switch will not dim a fluorescent light.
We had a service call that the lights would come on but they would not dim. Upon taking the switch out it was an incandescent dimmer. There were 2 other dimmer switches beside this one. They were both incandescent dimmers and they were all dimming t8 lamps.
I was wondering if anyone has ever found incandescent dimmers, dimming fluorescent lights?

I could be wrong but I believe the flourescents need to have dimming ballasts and a regular dimmer switch will work with these. That may have been the case where you were.

Yes, and I had to eat my words to a customer after putting down someone else's work.
The ones I ran into had Electronic ballasts made Energy Savings Inc. They were running 26 watt PL lamps.

In small print on the Ballast it said it was dimming ballast, in the past the only dimming ballasts I had worked with needed 3 wires from switch to ballast, and this just had 2

I too found these on a service call, they said for couple of days the lights where blinking then same as you descibe they would turn on and off but not dim

I do not know what the fix was, the customer went back to the installer as it was new work.


[This message has been edited by iwire (edited 01-25-2003).]

Fluorescent lamps need a dimming ballast and fluorescent dimmers designed to work with the ballast. I have never seen any dimming ballasts designed to work with incandesent dimmers.

Curt

Thanks Curt I was pretty sure i was wrong. You don't see this very often.

All incandescent dimmers I have seen state that they are to be used on permanently installed incandescent lighting only.