Dimmable Gu10 nightnare

[2piesFC]

Hi
Hope everyone had a nice Xmas break.

I got a varilight dimmer switch for a set of Gu10 LEDs about 60W of led.

They seemed to work fine but over the course of a couple months some of the gu10s have gone off, some go out and then come back on.

I was wondering if anyone had come across this before and what the remedy was?

Thank you

 

[mattg4321]

Fit some better GU10 lamps. What brand are the ones fitted?

 

[SparkyChick]

For starters there are numerous versions of the Varilight dimmers. I've tried a couple and have concluded the only one I'll fit is the vPro range because they just seem to work no matter what and have the option to configure their operation to suit the lamps they are driving (dimming mode and minimum brightness primarily).

As for lamps, I've only really ever fitted the dimmable LAP GU10s and whilst some people deride LAP products (justifiably so in a lot of cases), I've found their lamps to be pretty good and by that I mean I've only had a couple fail prematurely out of the hundreds I've fitted.

However, I've just done a job for a chap round the corner who had a problem with flickering LED lamps, specifically only a couple of them. The issue was a combination of dirty/failing potentiometer in the existing dimmer and poor terminations in a couple of precariously placed lamps. Tightened up the terminations and they didn't flicker unless the dimmer was touched, that's since been replaced with push button dimmer.

 

[2piesFC]

For starters there are numerous versions of the Varilight dimmers. I've tried a couple and have concluded the only one I'll fit is the vPro range because they just seem to work no matter what and have the option to configure their operation to suit the lamps they are driving (dimming mode and minimum brightness primarily).

As for lamps, I've only really ever fitted the dimmable LAP GU10s and whilst some people deride LAP products (justifiably so in a lot of cases), I've found their lamps to be pretty good and by that I mean I've only had a couple fail prematurely out of the hundreds I've fitted.

However, I've just done a job for a chap round the corner who had a problem with flickering LED lamps, specifically only a couple of them. The issue was a combination of dirty/failing potentiometer in the existing dimmer and poor terminations in a couple of precariously placed lamps. Tightened up the terminations and they didn't flicker unless the dimmer was touched, that's since been replaced with push button dimmer.

Hi thanks for three reply.
I fitted a varilight Pro dimmer too after reading up on them. I used dimmable lamps from toolstation. I've not used their lamps before.

 

[2piesFC]

Fit some better GU10 lamps. What brand are the ones fitted?

I used some from toolstation. Cant think of the brand. Never had any bother with the non dimmable ones so just assumed these would be fine

 

[Pretty Mouth]

Check the instructions for the V-Pro. There are 3 modes. It comes set to mode 1 by default, and this works fine for the majority of LEDs, but occasionally you get some that prefer mode 3.

 

[DefyG]

Dimmer-Lamp compatibility issues are usually evident from day one but as these have worked ok for a while, I would suspect premature failure of a lamp. I don't use TS lamps but as per #2 better quality/compatible lamps may help.
The dimmer (as inferred previously) may need re-programming if suffered a power cut/surge since the installation.

 

[RED~SIX]

I typically stick to Aurora GU10s where possible, they even work on most of the older Lutron dimmer systems.