Dimmer switch and pir questions

[chrisreid186]

hi guys just looking for some advice regarding spots and dimmers

1)can anyone please recommend a dimmer for 8 x 35w dicoric cool fit (heat forward) spot lights which are fed from individual 20/70w leading and trailing edge transformers, that are silent as
these are currently fitted and hum both at the tranformer and the switch when dimmer is on a low setting,

2)any tips on how to identify heat forward fittings as the lamps look identical?

3)also i fitted a stand alone pir sensor which fed a standard E.S outside light and after a couple of days the pir became faulty so chaged the pir all worked fine 2 days later and the same thing happend again, now the customer provided the lamp for the outside light and i think its one of those energy efficient ones as it had a small capsule around the filament, could the lamp be blowing the PIR sensors? i ir'd the lighting circuit and the readings were all over 500

thanks in advance chris

 

[Richard Burns]

Dimmers can hum when at the low end of the range, you could try the IQ dimmers from TLC-direct they are meant to cope with anything.

Dichroic lamps are coll fit but not heat forward they are heat backward, aluminium reflector lamps are heat forward.

If you look at a dichroic lamp and shine a light through them then there is a pearlescent oyster shell effect and some light passes through the aluminium ones do not pass light through and are just shiny silver.

A PIR should cope with a CFL lamp if it is just the one, make sure that the PIR is not getting water in it, and that the connections are tight or maybe try a more expensive PIR as the cheap ones go easily.
The lamps with a capsule inside the glass envelope them are halogen energy saves and should work fine with a PIR, though the inrush current is higher.

 

[chrisreid186]

cheers for the info much appreciated