Hello from Toronto: Question about Z-wave Dimmer Switches

[cookiemonsie (tk)]

Hello Everyone!
newbie here on home automation. moving to a new place at the end of the month and was really really hoping I could get a question answered.

the ask

• the other place has 3 rooms. living room, family room and basement in question

• i would to like to put recessed LED “pot ligthing” in all 3 rooms.
  – 6 in living room
  – 4 in family room
  – 4 in basement.

• ALso would like to install 3 z-wave compatible dimmer switches in all 3 rooms

my confusion

• ive gone through a lot of the forum messages and ive seen cases where the dimmers are not compatible with the lights ie…they flicker or make a humming noise etc please note that I want to install LED pot lights(not CFL or incadescent). the “products compatibility” page lists a number of dimmers but not sure which is LED compatible.

Can someone please advise which z-wave dimmer model would be best and which model of LED recesesed pot lighthing would be compatible with that dimmer?
also how can i tell if the socket has a neutral wiring? im getting an electrician to come and do all the work and was hoping to avoid any “gotchas” in the last minute.

to be honest ill just take your word for me and head over to homedepot buy it online ifyou can please just provide me the details.

thank you very much in advance.

[JDRoberts]

The switches will say “LED compatible.”

Most zwave switches that require a neutral wire will be LED compatible.
The ones that aren’t are mostly the older ones that don’t require a neutral.

http://www.homeseer.com/compare-z-wave-dimming-wall-switches.html

The reason there are so many forum topics is that many light boxes don’t have a neutral, and people are usually hoping to avoid the expense and trouble of fishing up a neutral by using one of the older switches, but then they run into the bulb compatibility issue.

As far as the neutral wire…if your house was built in Canada in the last 30 years, there will probably be a neutral somewhere, either in the wall or at the fixture. So it’s usually just a matter of “fishing up” the neutral and bringing it to the wall switch. The electrician will know.

Automated Switches: What should my wiring look like? (US Version)

So you want an automated hardwired light switch, but you’re not sure where to start. Well you’re in the right place. The most common requirement of any hardwired automated light switch is a neutral wire. Yes, there are a few…(read very, very, very few) switches that don’t require a neutral, but those will limit you to incandescent only. For those of us using LED, Fluorescent or some other energy efficient bulbs under 20w a neutral is REQUIRED! So what does this look like? [image] This is a diagram of a switch with the neutral run directly to the light. This is not good for automated hardwired light switchs and i would HIGHLY recommend that if you want to automate the light, contact an electrician and have them pull a neutral for you. It’s not as expensive as you think and will save you…

[cookiemonsie (tk)]

awesome. many thanks for your response @JDRoberts . looks like its a choice between the Evolve LRM-As and the Cooper RF9540-N. will boil down to what programmable features i want/need (sends instatnt status, programmable dim rate, programmable eld indicator etc).

Can you recommend a good LED recessed pot lighting thought that will work well with these dimmers?

thanks.

[cookiemonsie (tk)]

sniff sniff…no response as yet?

[JDRoberts]

Sorry–my house is 60 years old, we don’t even have overhead fixtures in all the rooms! I don’t know anything about pot lights.

Hopefully someone with experience will answer.

Meanwhile, here are a couple more topics to check:

Lighting Recommendations - 4 6in Recessed Lights.... Low Watt LED?

Hello everyone! Had an electrician put lighting into my media room (was the Den). He put in 4 pot lights (6 in) at 18in from the wall. We purchased the 65W equivalent LED Recessed Light Kits (retrofit) at 3000k white. With only 1 installed, found them way too bright. at “11 watts” I feel I need 4-6 Watt. I did order one of the new GE dimmable’s that work with all lighting types… so here comes my question. What are people doing in equivalent situations? I see Cree has a 40W equivalent , and I (believe) I can get the Satin Nickel Matte Baffle Trim which gives me the same look, at least 25W equivalent softer… Though I was hoping to try and find a roughly 30W equivalent… Does anyone have suggestions? Am I thinking about this properly? I will admit, the Nickel trim looked amazing, and I look…

And
.

Advice for Dimmer Switch and LED Bulbs selection

Hey guys, I am thinking of replace all the BR30 bulbs to be dimmable with zwave dimmer switches. I have 4 in living room, 4 in kitchen, 4 in dining room, and 4 in my office. I plan to buy Linear-WD500Z-1 dimmer switch: My questions are: Should I buy four Linear-WD500Z-1 switches for the four rooms? Any master or slave consideration? Must I buy z-wave zigbee bulbs or any dimmable bulbs will work? Cree and GE bulbs are great, but too expensive now. $15 EACH normal bulb in Homedepot! I saw the LED BR30 dimmable bulbs in Costco is much cheaper. If I can control the switch from ST to dim the bulbs from Costco, that will save lots of money!! Thanks so much for any suggestion!