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Odd flickering inside me and my NEIGHBORS house


mhammond1

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Hi Team,

Any thoughts on this. I have 130 C9 bulbs on the ridge of my house. When they go on and off, they are causing the recessed LED lights inside my house to flicker. It's annoying, but last year, I lived with it for the month. This year however, my neighbor across the street has put all recessed LED can's in his house and my show is causing HIS lights to flicker as well. In total, it's only about 7.58amp's of inrush. so, I'm not sure why it's (1) causing mine, and really not sure why it's causing his to flicker. No one else in the block has recessed LED can's so it's just me and him. I could replace all 130 C9's with dimmable LED C9's, but I just returned the 50' lift, so that would have to wait until next season. I'm hesitant to call the power company yet, since their response will most likely be, it's your 130 C9's (duh). When I plug my chevy volt in, I get an inrush of over 14 amps and I don't have a flicker on that, so why just these ridge lights....

hmmmm...

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All that indicates is that you nearly have enough lights in your display. However it isn't enough until you can determine what song is playing by the indoor pulse of the lights.

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The LEDS are more sensative to power changes as a standard bulb uses a filament that when powe goes through heats up and theres where the light comes from. Becuase of the super fast cycles of our sequencing its less seen in standard light bulbs over LED. As LEDs are not a heated filament but a powered semiconductor that creates the light there is nothing on when the power is gone. So when all lights go on, C9's do pull some power if you pop them all on the power in the house drops slightly, again as a LED doesnt have the buffer per say as the hologen bulbs you notice them easier. All the lights in the house are doing it, but becuase of the recovery speed you dont notice it as much in the standard bulbs. As for your neighbors I dont know.

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Your neighbor is most likely on the same transformer as you. I'm not sure there's anything you can do about it - and if he has complaints it's really with the power company, not you, as it's their job to feed him clean power.

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I had this problem before. I was having flickering issues along with all the neighbors on the same transformer. I found it by accident one night. If you are qualified enough to check line voltage at the lugs inside of your breaker box check for a voltage difference in the readings for both loads. meaning the supply voltage at the lugs before the main breaker.

IF YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED DO NOT DO THIS.

A voltage difference of as little as one volt can cause the lights to flicker. The voltage difference on my lines was exactly that. In my case the connections at the transformer were burned. There could be any other cause for a voltage difference from a bad splice to the lead wires at the transformer to the connection at your meter. If there is any voltage difference have it checked by an electrician ot the power supply company.

Anthony

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I get the light flickering too but only in my lamps in living room. I am going to put regular bulbs in the lamps and see if there is a difference. Thanks for the input. If that works I will use regular bulbs during show month and halogens the rest of year. Because the flickering is super annoying to me. Had it last year until I ran a cord from garage to half of my first 16 channel box and half to house. Now having 32 channels this year i needed to use both outlets.

Edited by Brett H.
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Thanks for the responses. Much appreciated. I don't suppose adding more service to my house would help? I already have 200amps.

No, but your power company might need to upgrade he transformer on your pole/on the street. If it's really bothering you or your neighbor, you should call the power company and have them make sure nothing is wrong.

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Wonder if a power conditioner or Back Up UPS would keep the power level mooth? It would have to be one of the ones that are always on battery to keep the voltage consistant

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No, but your power company might need to upgrade he transformer on your pole/on the street. If it's really bothering you or your neighbor, you should call the power company and have them make sure nothing is wrong.

+1

On a similar note of flicker. Any time my 30 strobes came on, my lamp lights in the living room flickered. I moved my controller that has 30 strobes from a circuit with a breaker at the bottom of the breaker box (where it originally was powered from) to a circuit with the breaker at the top of the breaker box. The indoor flicker went away. Won't fix your neighbors problem but might fix yours.

Tim made a good point. Something with the transformer needs to be looked at. Might be on the vurge of failure.

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Wonder if a power conditioner or Back Up UPS would keep the power level mooth? It would have to be one of the ones that are always on battery to keep the voltage consistant

my problem is I have 22 recessed lights in the first floor and 7 in the master bedroom. I couldn't put those on a ups...

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I get the light flickering too but only in my lamps in living room. I am going to put regular bulbs in the lamps and see if there is a difference. Thanks for the input. If that works I will use regular bulbs during show month and halogens the rest of year. Because the flickering is super annoying to me. Had it last year until I ran a cord from garage to half of my first 16 channel box and half to house. Now having 32 channels this year i needed to use both outlets.

Nope, the regular incan bulbs will flicker too.

Mine all flicker when a song like Christmas Jam hits the part of the sequence where I have all lights {mostly LED, some incans} shimmer at the same time.

It was really bad with the CFL bulbs, it was worse with LED bulbs and still very noticable with the incans, unfortunately the flickering was still bad enough to be annoying with the standard household incan bulbs.

So I just turn the lights off inside during display times that are affected and only turn a light or lamp on if I really need it in the area of the house that's affected by the flickering.

Funny thing is it's ONLY the shimmer effect that causes the flickering in my house, dims, fades, twinkling, quick off or on, no flickering issues at all, just the shimmer effect.

Edited by Orville
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All that indicates is that you nearly have enough lights in your display. However it isn't enough until you can determine what song is playing by the indoor pulse of the lights.

You win!! I thought I was the only one that had this problem!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just adding some more details.... The electric company has come out three times now. They said they put a "meter" on the "line" and don't see any drops. They see my house draw more, but that's to be expected when I turn on the lights. They did upgrade the cable on my feed into the transformer from aluminum to copper. They didn't think that would fix it (it didn't) but they are trying anything they can think of. They did find an article on Google that said VHF signal could interfere with LED lights. Not the problem either, since my 1watt FM transmitter is nothing compared to the 50,000watts from KISS107.9 FM just 10 miles away from me. I shut off my FM transmitter and it didn't make a difference. So here's what I'm thinking I can do to minimize the symptoms, but still not sure what the root cause is. I took my neighbors dimmer switch off the kitchen lights and noticed it was a dimmer for incan's only. So, I replaced it with a non-dimming switch and I'll see what happens tonight.

You win!! I thought I was the only one that had this problem!

There is only one song that I can tell based on the dimming of the lights inside my house.... One of 8 songs... :(

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glad you found out your neighbors problem but i dont have a dimmer switch so unfortunately this wont help me. I think i have an empty outlet in basement i can illiminate and run the wire out to a new outlet. I will see if that helps.

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