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Migrating in some flourescents ?

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    Migrating in some flourescents ?

    Greetings All !

    Now that my X10-based system has seemingly stabilized (reliability is up, noise and freak happenings are down).... I've been thinking about lowering my energy costs.

    If I start replacing some of my incandescent bulbs with flourescent bulbs, my understanding is that I should expect:

    1) To replace all my lamp modules with appliance modules (since flourescents will not work with normal lamp modules) ?

    2) Expect to possibly see an increase in noise on the lines.


    Are there any other issues I might encounter... or anything else I should consider before I start swapping ?

    Thanks!

    #2
    Sounds about right. Some brands definitely cause more noise than other brands, so you might want to get a few different brands and see which ones work best. Unfortunatly I don't know of any good or bad ones in particular, but others might have some suggestions.

    There are some dimmable compact flourescent bulbs, and those should work with your regular lamp modules but they may or may not work with the two wire wall switches. They're a bit more expensive, but they have the added benifit of being dimable and not requiring a module that makes a loud click when you turn it on or off.

    Finally, the X-10 appliance and lamp modules have a 'local control' feature that allows you to turn a lamp off then on again to force the module to turn on without using the remote. Some compact flourescent ballasts can cause problems with this feature and your lights will come on by themselves. Again, some brands of bulbs seem to have more trouble with this than others. Also, there are modifications you can make to the modules to disable the local control feature if you don't mind opening them up and snipping a wire. I don't know where the directions for this are, but if you do a search on 'defeat local control' or something like that you should be able to find it.

    HTH,
    Brett

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