cfc bulbs flicker when celing fan is OFF?

Question

I replaced all of my bulbs in my home with CFC bulbs... aside from the misrepresentation on the packaging (supposed to give off the equivalant of a 65W bulb, yet the rooms are much darker now) the bulbs i installed in the celing fan fixture in my living room flicker when the celing fan is not on...

the bulbs are in tight, i double checked, when i noticed this flickering...

the fan is made by hunter, and has a remote control to control fan speed and to turn on/off the light, it does not have a dimmer function... it is also on a 3-way switch...

the flickering never occured with standard bulbs, and never occurs when the fan is on high, regardless what direction the fan spins in...

[e-mail]

light also flickers when fan is in low speed...

Answer 1

CFLs do not play well with any kind of electronically controlled socket. Fixtures with photo sensors or timers do not work well either. The electronics that take care of the switching mess with the frequency of the electricity supplied to the socket. The effect is reduced as the load on the device increases. When your fan is on high, it is pulling enough current to bring the frequency back in working range for the CFL.

Normal bulbs are not sensitive to the frequency (to a point) but florescents are. Most CFLs indicate on the label that they are not suitable for an electronically switched fixture.

Answer 2

If the remote control can turn the light on and off, they are most likely doing it with a triac or similar electronic device, lets just call it a transistor. The circuitry around this device passes a very very small amount of current, nowhere near enough to light a conventional incandescent (filament type) bulb but here we get into trouble with the electronic ballast in the fluorescent lamp. The input circuit of the lamp is a capacitor, intended to store up energy during the pulses of the AC electrical service and light the lamp. With the small amount of leakage in the controller circuit feeding the lamp it slowly charges the capacitor and when the voltage gets high enough, the circuit strikes the lamp and it starts to glow. Now that we are using power to light the lamp, it quickly discharges the capacitor (since we dont have a steady supply of power, just the leakage) so the lamp goes out. A second later it has stored up enough to try again....

You say bulbs... Plural, as in more than 1 bulb on the fan? All you need to do is put in one standard incand lamp plus all the compact fluorescents you want, problem gone. If you are not concerned with a difference in brightness, use a relatively low power incand bulb.