Some, but not all, recessed lights on a switch intermittently won’t turn on.
Perhaps the answer is that my particular LED fixtures aren’t compatible, but before I replace twenty recessed fixtures, I’d like to be sure.I have a new construction house, built in 2017, with twenty-two of what I believe to be these in the ceiling:https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-4...-in/1000266497Utilitech claims they’re compatible.These twenty-two recessed lights are controlled by four dimmer switches and two on/off switches. Three of the dimmers control 4 recessed lights, one of the dimmers controls 8 recessed lights, one of the on/off switches controls one recessed light, and one of the on/off switches controls one recessed light paired with a fixture that houses four GU10 bulbs. I recently spent well over $1,000 on Lutron Caseta switches and dimmers to control my entire house, including the above recessed lights. I’m determined to make these work, but am plagued with problems.Originally, these were all controlled with manual Leviton dimmers that used a switch and a little slider. I think they all worked fine, but I never paid the lights much attention. Recently I bought and installed the Lutron Casetta PD-6WCL for all of these recessed lights, the normal dimmer they sell for about $60. While they worked fine for all my non-recessed fixtures, my recessed fixtures with the dimmers all acted strangely, but differently depending on the number of lights per dimmer.The single dimmer with 8 lights worked perfectly fine for about two days. Two days later, one to two of the lights on the switch wouldn’t turn on. This could be remedied by cutting the power over and over, and they’d all eventually turn on...for awhile. Then a few would stop turning on again. I tried replacing the PD-6WCL with the Lutron Caseta PRO PD10NXD. This fixed the issue for, again, two days. After two days, I had the same problem.The dimmers with 4 lights worked fine for about an hour, then would flash uncontrollably. I stupidly tried installing the LUT-MLC capacitors on these circuits based on something I read online, which solved the flashing (Lutron later told me doing this was not appropriate and would fry the capacitors). Unfortunately, while this solved the problem for about two days, 1/4 lights on each circuit would randomly stop turning on, just like the 8-light dimmer. After the above, at the advice of Lutron’s tech support, I tried replaced all the above dimmers on in the problem areas with the Lutron Casetta ELV dimmers, which are apparently more compatible with LEDs. This solved all the problems on all the circuits—for four days. Now, only the 8-light dimmer works fine. Unfortunately, all of the four-light circuits experience an issue with one of the lights intermittently won’t turn on, as before. This can sometimes be cured by pulling the air-gap tab, waiting, and powering on. I’m at my wit’s end. If I need to replace all the lights, that’s what I need to do. I’m not looking forward to it, though, because they’re expensive and use 3.5” cutouts, which is evidently a bizarre size. Perhaps relevant, perhaps not, the on/off Caseta interrupter switch controlling only a single recessed light (not dimmed, but the same dimmable type of light) consistently works fine. However, the on/off switch controlling a recessed light paired with another fixture running the four GU10 bulbs rarely turns on. It does sometimes, but rarely. Like I said, I’m at my wit’s end. More importantly, my wife is ready to kill me over this. My next thought is to spend a fortune changing all the lights. I’m worried the lights are simply incompatible or bad. It’s just strange that the dimmer with eight of them is problem-free with the ELV switch, but the others aren’t. If there’s a a cheaper/simpler option that fixes it, though, I’m all ears.Here’s a video example of the issue:https://imgur.com/NhduFV4
