I recently purchased a new home and the good news is every switch box has to have a neutral as it was built to the new electrical code. The other nice thing is all the recessed lighting is LED; the problem is that all the recessed lights are REALLY bright and of course no dimmers. The brightness is helpful for the porch with a single recessed light but my kitchen has 6 recessed lights, and it’s right next to a dinning area with 3 additional recessed lights.
So the big question was: Will is Dim?
The first step was to pull the cover off one of the LEDs to see if I could figure out who the manufacture is. This is what I found:
So off to Google I went; first I did a search for “Lynk Labs”. What I found wasn’t the manufacture of the fixture but the manufacture of the light module it self. I looked around the Lynk Labs website for a few minutes and found this: http://www.lynklabs.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=67_69&products_id=280
I then started looking at the spec sheet: http://www.lynklabs.com/images/datasheets201509/120/SR46-14W-120%20%20V6.pdf
I was able to find my module: SR46EP2H14W52WDIH-120
The lights use 14 watts and produce 1040 Lumen each! So that explains why my kitchen is so bright. 9 x 1040 = 9360! This is nice when you are cooking but not when you are eating dinner at the island and trying to watch the TV on the other end of the room. They are also AC-LEDs, and I found that really interesting.
To my surprise on the first page of the spec sheet it says: “Dimable Module” and further down it says my modules will “Warm on Dim”. Sounds like the color temperature will change as you dim them, I’m good with that.
The next step was to figure out if the GE 12729 Z-Wave Smart Dimmers could dim these LEDs without causing problems. I started doing some research and found that the load should really be 40w or higher; basically the dimmers work better when there is enough load. The 9 recessed LEDs are split between two sets of 3-way switches. The kitchen is 6 lights x 14 watts = 84 watts and the dinning area is 3 lights x 14 watts = 42 watts. So I was a little worried that 3 lights would not be enough load but I carried on anyway.
I purchased 2x GE 12729 & 2x GE 12728 add-on switches as this is a 3-way setup. I also found out during install that the two sets of lights are on different breakers but this wasn’t really a problem. The one box that has a switch from each set of lights has a neutral from each leg and I was able to keep them separate. So no neutral loops and no stealing a neutral from another leg.
Here is the results: https://youtu.be/PLI8wPrpkmA
Also seen in the video is my lamps and ceiling fan that are also being controlled by GE Z-Wave dimmers.
(Video was taken with an Olympus E-PL5 and a 7.5mm Fisheye Lens)
The only problem I have now is wondering if the two recessed LEDs on my back porch will dim as 2 lights x 14 watts = 28 watts. I also have other parts of the house that just have a single recessed LED on one switch. I will most likely just install a GE 12727 on/off switch like I did for my front porch light.
My goals is to slowly replace every switch in the house with GE Z-Wave switches.
5Ghz is the way to go.