Household flickering leds

[Railways]

A bit of input required please.

Our new abode built 5 years ago has LED downlights fitted throughout. The rooms that have dimmers fitted flicker spasmodically. Driving me nuts!!!! Here are some facts.

Only the rooms with dimmers flicker. There are 6 rooms of which 5 are on the one circuit (L1) and one on L2.

There is no pattern as in what time of the day.

You can have a few rooms on and one may or may not flicker and if another rooms starts to flicker its not in unison with any other room. Like they are all are doing there thing separately.

It seems to have been a problem since brand new as the original owner had it noted on their warranty fix sheet.

It has had Clipsal 31LCDA Load correction device https://www.clipsal.com/products/detail?CatNo=31LCDA&itemno=31LCDA&tab-document-1=0 fitted to all dimmers. No good.

Have tried a different brand downlight installed temporarily overnight as an experimant - no good.

Tried a different push button dimmer switch to one room as an experiment . No good.

Yesterday had an S click ripple signal filter fitted https://www.cabac.com.au/p/lighting/lighting-controls/ripple-filters/hns030rf-1050 No good

Any input appreciatted.

Thanks learned people.

Edited August 26 by Railways
added more info

[Pop Bumper Pete]

Realize you are too old for mood lighting and remove the dimmers?

[Autosteve]

I'm thinking meter the downlight power.

Let's see what the power is actually doing.

[Railways]

I;ve been reading a few whirlpool forume threads on this subject looking for the magic $2 answer and it seems there is heaps of reasons but primarily the word incompatible comes up a lot. wrong dimmers with a specific brand of light e.g.

They are clipsal lights and the correct Clipsal dark green (emerald coloured) dimmer has been fitted.

Further to that as mentioned we've tried a different dimmer.

I was reading the instruction book that came with the ripple filter and apparently there is 3 different ripple frequencies 492 Hz, 750Hz and 1050Hz. The filter fitted is a 1050 but according to the zone map included the Maitland area is 750Hz. I wonder if this is why the installed filter isn't doing the job??

[robm]

yeah i was going to suggest different dimmers -  smoe lights need different types. Leading edge, trailing edge or hopefully most these days can use universal dimmers

[Autosteve]

Are the downlights 12vDC or 240vAC?

[Railways]

They run rectangular transformers on each up in the roof so I'm saying 12V. I'll pull one out tomorrow Steve.

[robm]

Hmmm. I reckon dimmer might be incorrect match of dimmer and light. Wonder if something funky is happening with dimmer and transformer 

[highlander2287]

I have experienced this problem also. I already had a light with a dimmer. Had led downlights installed (bunnings deta) with rectangle driver and early on experienced some flickering. I can dim the lights through an app and therefore don't use the installed dimmer switch. I do make sure that it is at full on or full off though. This seems to help and nowadays I don't get the flickering. I do however get flickering just before a downlight is on its way out. From what I have read previously it seems in general downlights don't play well with dimmers.

[Railways]

1 hour ago, robm said:

Hmmm. I reckon dimmer might be incorrect match of dimmer and light. Wonder if something funky is happening with dimmer and transformer 

Thanks Rob but they are Clipsal lights and Clipsal rotary dial dimmers. We have tried a diffferent down light and a different dimmer on separate occasions to no avail.

Having said that tonight not one single room has flickered at all. weird!!

1 hour ago, highlander2287 said:

I have experienced this problem also. I already had a light with a dimmer. Had led downlights installed (bunnings deta) with rectangle driver and early on experienced some flickering. I can dim the lights through an app and therefore don't use the installed dimmer switch. I do make sure that it is at full on or full off though. This seems to help and nowadays I don't get the flickering. I do however get flickering just before a downlight is on its way out. From what I have read previously it seems in general downlights don't play well with dimmers.

Hmm, an app you say. Interesting but how much work and $$$ would it take to convert over??

[Autosteve]

3 hours ago, Railways said:

They run rectangular transformers on each up in the roof so I'm saying 12V. I'll pull one out tomorrow Steve.

You may be changing the transformers.

If you've got an old 20watt halogen bulb, try swapping any of the effected bulbs and see if the problem goes away.

The load isn't always enough and what was designed to work has had it's bulbs swapped for low watted LED types and now, not enough load.

I went from 6 X 20 watt bulbs to 6 X 7 watt bulbs and had problems.

Impressively, the 7watters are brighter.

[highlander2287]

Not sure how yours are set up. The wiring in my roof space has 4 separate plug outlets fitted for each downlight. When I install them I just plug the downlight into the plug in the ceiling. I use the grid connect app to set the lights up and can change the brightness via the app. I can also change the colours, if I wanted to. The Deta brand from bunnings are compatible with the app and simply plug in.