That's weird. My guess is interference. Electrical gremlins are often loose neutral but that doesn't fit well for your symptoms.
Are we talking a little flicker like a candle or full on flashing on and off?
Enough of COVID...what are you doing to the house?
- Thread starter mimico_polak
- Start date
Are we talking a little flicker like a candle or full on flashing on and off?
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Smart dimmers have power supplies that create inrush current when loads change. They are very sensitive to voltage dips and often send electrical noise back onto the circuit.
When another dimmer turns on the Inrush current + noise causes the other dimmer’s electronics to misfire, LED pot lights flicker.
This happens most often if the circuits share the same neutral (white) and there is resistance in a neutral connection.
Things to do:
Verify your Decora dimmers are made for leds, and if so they are in led mode, not incandescent. All smart ones are led compatible so your Kasa units will be ok.
Change out the decors dimmers if they are analog. Smart dimmers don’t play nice with analog dimmers on the same circuit.
Verify your travellers are wired correctly (neutral cannot be switched) AND that only one of the switches in each light circuit is a dimmer (common diy mistake is using 2 dimmers in a 3 way). The other must be a standard three way switch (or a companion type dimmer). You can’t run two dimmers together on the same circuit.
Still flickering?
Likely a neutral connection problem at one of the switch or daisy chain connections. Tighten wire nuts on whites, replace any loose backstab connections with pigtails.
A few more details might help: basement (smart switch dimmer), main room (2-way dimmer, decora), kitchen (3-way decora, dimmer on only one end). All led pot lights.
Main and kitchen can both be on and will only flicker if near bottom of dimmer (really a non-issue as they’re rarely that dim anyways).
If either main and/or kitchen are on they will flicker if basement are turned on as well.
If only one of the three rooms is turned on they do not flicker.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Ok, that’s telling me the wiring is probably done right, but there is a setup issue with the decors if a neutral residtance issue (white wires) .
1) find the trimpots on the decor as and set them do there is no flicker when lights are low.
2) eliminate backstab connections on all the white wires of your decors switches, make sure there aren’t 2 whites shoved into the Kasas and the connections in the kasas are tight. Tighten all ganged whites in switches, receptacles and fixture JBs on the circuit.
If that doesn’t work, you may need a load stabilizer in the kitchen (the explanation is complicated). Instead, you can just change everything to Kasa and as long as your neutrals are good, the flicker should stop.
.
1) find the trimpots on the decor as and set them do there is no flicker when lights are low.
2) eliminate backstab connections on all the white wires of your decors switches, make sure there aren’t 2 whites shoved into the Kasas and the connections in the kasas are tight. Tighten all ganged whites in switches, receptacles and fixture JBs on the circuit.
If that doesn’t work, you may need a load stabilizer in the kitchen (the explanation is complicated). Instead, you can just change everything to Kasa and as long as your neutrals are good, the flicker should stop.
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