As incandescent & compact fluorescent light bulbs in my home have been dying, I've been replacing them with LED bulbs, as those have dropped in price considerably (the local electric company's subsidizing pretty decent sales in some nearby chain stores, too) and should last much longer. No problems with the standard on/off bulbs yet, but I've begun to lose lights in dimmable fixtures.
I've read elsewhere that the rotary style switch won't work with LED bulbs (this was confirmed by putting a couple dimmable bulbs in a dimmable fixture in the dining room and watching the crazy poltergeist effect when the dial was set anywhere between off and 100% on).
That's not a huge deal for me, to swap out a couple of switches as needed. But I now have an even more unusual problem. In my living room we've got a ceiling fan, which the previous owner purchased @ Home Depot some 10-12 years ago. It's got 3 sockets (60W max apiece, I believe) and its remote is the only means of controlling its ability to dim the lights. On a lark, I tried replacing a couple of the bulbs that burned out recently with a pair of dimmable 60W-equivalent LED bulbs. With all 3 bulbs in there–the 2 LED + 1 40W incandescent–all 3 dimmed just fine, but were much too bright for the room, so I simply removed the lone incandescent. Unfortunately, when the light was off, the LED bulbs never fully turned off. Only when I had the 3rd bulb, the incandescent, in with them would the light function properly.
I elected to purchase 3 40W-equivalent bulbs, thinking that having all 3 in there would solve my problem of brightness and the weird empty socket keeping the light from turning off all the way. Unfortunately, with all 3 sockets occupied by dimmable LED bulbs, the fixture will not shut off fully. It dims perfectly fine, but the lights are, otherwise, on all the time. Any ideas what's causing my problem, and any potential solutions (short of "buy a new fan," I hope).
And, for whatever it's worth:
- fan: Hampton Bay Sussex 52"
- wireless remote: Hampton Bay UC7083T
- old incandescent bulb: 40W, A15 bulb, E26 base (brand unknown)
- first LED bulbs (60W-equivalent): Zilotek, A19, 120V, 9W, 60Hz, 80mA, 3000K, 800 lumens, dimmable
- newest LED bulbs (40W-equivalent): Feit, A19, 120V, 6.5W, 60Hz, 66mA, 3000K, 450 lumens, dimmable
Best Answer
What is happening is that the folks who designed your fan receiver did a terrible job of it, and you simply didn't notice it before. Incandescent/halogen bulbs are relatively insensitive to leakage currents because they are so darn inefficient -- you can put several mA through them and nobody will notice. However, putting that same 5-10mA through a LED light bulb will cause it to turn on dimly or flicker, depending on the bulb's internal circuits. Whoops!
The answer is to replace the fan receiver with a model that doesn't leak current down the light wire when the light's supposed to be off. (You'll probably have to replace the transmitter remote along with it.)