[KingFriday13]

Ten-month old house with lots of can and sconce lights. All LEDs. The builder installed Ecosmart bulbs.

The lights work OK and then out of the blue, the lights on a circuit will start flickering. It persists for a while, then stops. Restarts at other random times. No major loads coming on or off when it happens. It has occurred on different light circuits.

I'm thinking this is a bulb problem and I need better units. But the builder went cheap on many things. Any other issues I should consider?

 

[Bud9051]

A 10 month old house I would expect those bulbs to be from a more modern generation. Early bulbs did go through growing pains. I just replaced a Pilips 60 w equivalent for same reason, random intermittent flicketing, maybe 3 years old. No receipt but I will locate a box store that sells that brand and give it back to them. Unknown what they will do but important to find out.

My recommendation would be a box to collect problem bulbs and return them to see if they will replace. If no or if you want an answer before you fill a box send an email to the source and ask for a replacement.

Bud

 

[joe-nwt]

LED bulbs sell for about $1.50 around here. They will go as far as the trashcan if one fails.

 

[seharper]

Because the local power company subsidizes them. It makes sense macroeconomically, it's cheaper to propagate efficient tech than to build more power plants at $10/watt. mm

Cheap LEDs are cheap. Lights of America got shut down.... I gotta feeling they just changed the sign on the building to Ecosmart. Them, Feit Electric and Utilitech, have just appalling build quality IME, they're made to last outlast the return window at Home Depot.

Ikea's build quality is surprisingly good for the price, other than that I stick to middle or top shelf from Cree or GE. The other members of the Phoebus Cartel have spun off their LED divisions; for some reason they don't think the LED bulb business has a future.

Part of the problem is cheaper LEDs tend to have poor power factor. They are all drawing current irregularly... in exactly the same way... so even if one of them won't be a problem, a whole bunch of them could be.

 

[joe-nwt]

Sticker price at the big box store. Our electricity rates here would make you cringe. All but the procrastinators have switched to LED, office buildings etc. The market is saturated, hence the low price. I doubt the utility is subsidizing anyone, at least not in my location. We actually have a surplus of hydroelectric and an isolated grid.

We do have rebates for LED, but that's after purchase.

 

[RetroActv]

I purchased a bunch of canned light LEDs online focusing on price (cheapest!). Had the same problem as you, random flickering. Drove me nuts! I had just wired a subpanel into my basement, and I was convinced I did something wrong.

Had an electrician come over and check everything. He moved some of those bulbs to the main panel, and same problem occurred.

I ended up replacing those with some higher quality (i.e. more expensive) lights from the local hardware store, and the problem went away. In fact, I can watch the old, cheap bulbs flicker in the same housing that one of the higher quality lights doesn't flicker. Right next to each other.

Bottom line is that the quality seems to matter with LED bulbs. I've had bad luck with Sunoco (Amazon) brand, and good luck with Philips, Halo, Feit, and Commercial Electric.