Flickering MR11 LED bulbs

NaughtiusMaximus

The entire ground floor of our house is lit by 12v MR11 spotlight fittings, 37 in total. I've tried changing all the bulbs from halogen to LED, 24 of the fittings work fine with LEDs but 13 flicker to varying degrees. Short of changing the transformers is there anything I can do to get around the problem, eg are there particular types of LED bulbs which don't flicker or is there gadget a which goes between the bulb and the fitting which could prevent it?

Lorian

probably drawing too little load from the transformers. You can get cheap LED compatible transformers that work fine. (Amazon/screwfix etc).

NaughtiusMaximus

Lorian wrote: »

probably drawing too little load from the transformers. You can get cheap LED compatible transformers that work fine. (Amazon/screwfix etc).

The problem is most of the dodgy fittings are directly below the main bedroom so I would have to dismantle the bed (super king) and wardrobes (4x 1 metre wide floor to ceiling wardrobes) before I could pull up the carpets and floorboards, do-able but a PITA. Changing the transformers is the long term plan and I'm confident I could do the job myself but it will wait until the room next needs to be redecorated. If there's no other solution to the problem, I'll just bulk buy halogen bulbs before remaining stocks disappear from the shops.

I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't think to check this 6 months ago when we bought the house. We completely redecorated most of the house within the first 6 weeks after completion and for a while each of the bedrooms was down to bare floorboards, it would have been an easy job to change the transformers then but I didn't know at the time there would be a problem with LED bulbs.

phill99

If you have dimmers, the LEDs will flicker.


You need special dimmers for LEDs.

Lorian

Are you sure you can just remove the light fittings (usually pull them out on the spring clips) and pull the cable to extract the transformer(s) though the light fitting holes?

If they share a transformer you might still find its near one of the holes.

Personally I wouldn't do it any other way.

In my experience they are always shaped to come though a MR11 sized hole.

NaughtiusMaximus

phill99 wrote: »

If you have dimmers, the LEDs will flicker.

You need special dimmers for LEDs.

We did have dimmers on some of the lights but I've replaced them with standard switches although it is mainly the lights which use to be on dimmers I'm having problems with. Of the 19 lights which were on dimmers, 11 are flickering with LEDs but only 2 of 17 which have always been connected to standard switches flicker

Lorian wrote: »

Are you sure you can just remove the light fittings (usually pull them out on the spring clips) and pull the cable to extract the transformer(s) though the light fitting holes?

If they share a transformer you might still find its near one of the holes.

Personally I wouldn't do it any other way.

In my experience they are always shaped to come though a MR11 sized hole.

Thanks I didn't know that, I just assumed you'd fit them from above. I'll have a look tomorrow,

Soulginge

Look into buying the correct drivers for MR11 LED, they don't run on transformers. Some LED MR11 lamps will work ok on transformers but will flicker for a multitude of reasons. I had a similar problem in my house and had to do a fair bit of research into the cause. Buy proper LED drivers for MR11 lamps and you should eradicate the problem.

I used these:-

https://www.lightbulbworld.co.uk/bell-15w-led-line-driver-10353-p.asp

shaun_from_Africa

Just being a bit pedantic.
LED's do run on transformers, it's just that the output of these has been rectified to make it DC as opposed to AC. Some sellers actually refer to them as LED transformers.

Because LED's turn on and off very quickly, the reversing polarity of AC is noticeable (they will turn on and off 50 times per second) where as halogens are incandescent and stay illuminated long enough whilst the polarity changes so that there is no flickering.