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Hi - hoping someone could help me out here. I recently installed 22 recessed LED lights in my drop ceiling of my basement. To be specific, these are what I put in:
They are 13w each, so that makes a total of 286 watts.
Most dimmer switches I've found say they support around 150w of dimmable LEDs or 600w of incandescent lights.
Would it be a fire hazard or risk to use a switch like this in my circuit? What kind of switch should I look for that can support this? Ideally it would be something that can be controlled remotely as well, but I would even be happy with a regular dimmer switch. Did I overdo it with the amount of lights on one circuit?
it looks like you are limited to 150w in led with the wf6 recommended ballast list . i did not check them all as a lot were listed as approved but the numbers I recognized were limited to 150w
who selected these fixtures ?
in my opinion the wrong type of fixtures were selected . dimming fixtures come in line voltage and 0-10vdc ....
these fixtures are 120v line voltage. you are very limited to how many can be dimmed on 1 dimmer . usually when you have lots to dim you use a 0-10vdc system . then the proper dimmers can have many many fixtures on the circuit . You are limited by the manufacturers driver board in 0-10v and not the dimmers. So you can generally go very high in fixture numbers.
120v is the poor mans dimming system and is not dimmed in large numbers , it really is for a small room . you can call the lutron and Lithonia tech line and see if they have some ideas .
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-10-2018 at 09:55 AM..
...or you can divide the total into two or three different circuits and use dimmers for each circuit.
It ain't rocket science- but a little forethought into the lighting design and it's capacities/requirements would certainly have eliminated the "problem" you have now.
Unless Lutron has an expander system he would have to have a few dimmers. There is a reason line voltage dimmable fixtures are so cheap. I would think Lutron would have an expander. But they ain’t cheap .usually with the 120v you can use almost any dimmer , they just get de-rated , so i know lutron does have high wattage exapanders , but i don't know about their use with led . i retired and am no longer up to date on their line
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-10-2018 at 10:40 AM..
these would have been a better choice-lithonia wf4-mvolt
ELECTRICAL — Multi-volt (120-277V, 50/60Hz) proprietary remote LED driver/splice box, with two
(2) additional low-voltage wires for 0-10v dimming, down to 10% (depending on dimmer model and
application). High efficient driver with power factor > 0.9. Ambient operating temperature: -40°F (-40°C)
to +104°F (+40°C). Standard input wattage is 9.6W, 70 lumens per wat
"
A quick search for a high wattage LED dimmer produced many results. It looks like you could dim up to 450 watts of LED lighting, Leviton DSM10-1LZ, less than $59.
There are probably other ways you can dim over 150 watts of LED lighting. There are probably commercial solutions with much higher LED wattage capacity, at a much higher price! You might also want to have a little extra capacity in the LED dimmer, to give you the option to upgrade to brighter LED lights in the future that would draw a little more power, such as 90 watt equivalent LED bulbs that draw 15 watts each. Having some extra capacity would help future proof that electrical design.
The Leviton-DSM10-1LZ is a 3-way, which gives you the option to use another 3-way on/off switch at another location. Or put a 4-way on/off switch between the two 3-way dimmer and switch.
It's also possible to have multiple wireless dimmer controls, if you want to be able to dim the lights at multiple locations. The Lutron Maestro series LED multi-point dimmers can be configured to dim LED lighting up to 10 locations.
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