Reply To: Miscellaneous Electric Tips

Dr. Pepper–

What a great use for the continuity tester! I wouldn’t have thought it would actually detect continuity thru a person.

Would your idea work for supper veggies too – i.e. broccoli, spinach, etc. – or would that be too much of a stretch?

(Hopefully, your kids won’t be curious about someone who has a pacemaker.)

Pashuteh Yid–

CFLs, unless designed to work with dimmers, shouldn’t be used with a dimmer switch, even if the switch is in the “full on” position.

This can shorten the lifespan of the bulbs, and (much more importantly) be a safety hazard.

Old-time dimmer switches used a simple resistor to cut down on the juice reaching the bulb, but modern dimmers actually flip the current on and off very rapidly.

This on-and-off type of current is what CFLs have a problem with.

Even if your dimmer is in “full brightness” mode, the dimmer circuit still has an effect.

Please see the following for a more detailed technical explanation:

http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm#dim

(The page organizer thoughtfully put in tags; the one above is for his take on dimmers. If you have the time, the rest of the page is interesting and informative, too.)

Cutting thru the technical jargon, there is a real fire hazard created by using non-dimmable CFL with a dimmer switch.

If you want to gain the energy-saving benefits of CFL bulbs without the potchke / loss of convenience removing the dimmer would involve, why not just buy dimmable CFLs?