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Our kitchen lights are all LED 120vac drop in bulbs. When I run my Festool vacuum and sander in the basement, the lights upstairs do a full on disco party. Any thoughts on what I can do to resolve this?

Luke Pighetti
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  • Are you able to measure any voltage drop on the kitchen lighting circuit, and does the lighting dim/blink when the sander is running at idle, if you will, or only when the tool is loaded by having a workpiece present? – ThreePhaseEel Mar 13 '23 at 02:55
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    These questions keep coming. I am starting to wonder if its the noise from these appliances that's disturbing the leds rather than voltage. – Rohit Gupta Mar 13 '23 at 03:15
  • Run the vacuum and the sander separately to see which appliance is the culprit – Jasen Mar 13 '23 at 05:23
  • Last time I checked festool's vacuum used a fairly big motor and lights dimming during starting would not surprise me.

    A "disco show" seems unusual though. Check that the brushes in the vacuum's motor are good.

     – Jasen Mar 13 '23 at 05:23
  • Just a little background on me: I have a little experience with electrical circuits but that was many years ago. I believe this is a line noise issue that keeps coming up on Stack Overflow and not a voltage drop issue. But I haven't found any good resources on how to control line noise. I know how I might do this in a low wattage DC circuit on a breadboard, but never heard of anything for residential circuits. – Luke Pighetti Mar 13 '23 at 15:48
  • Everything is in good working order. The lights are on a separate 20A circuit from the sander. The lights also flicker when any of the appliances in the house are run. The sander is a good example because it's reproducible. Here is a link to a video: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/666539/224755069-5735cd7a-77ab-427d-b8c0-eceb7b840512.mov – Luke Pighetti Mar 13 '23 at 15:50
  • My personal theory is that the power delivery circuitry on these drop in 120VAC LED bulbs are not equipped to handle line noise with the same grace as an incandescent whose light output would take an amount of time to change, resulting in a smooth light output even in the face of line noise. – Luke Pighetti Mar 13 '23 at 15:53
  • Hey all, a little more info. We have noticed that the flickering occurs on this circuit if any heat pump is running as well. That includes our refrigerator, heat pump water heater, and now a new heat pump washer dryer combo. It doesn't matter which circuit they are on. The house is wired with a 200A panel and there is plenty of headroom. The heat pump water heater is 240vac – Luke Pighetti Oct 03 '23 at 20:43
  • Linking this as a related issue: https://diy.stackexchange.com/a/267907/164248

    There must be some way to provide isolated clean power to these LEDs. I'm not the only one having this exact issue. Or maybe a type of LED bulb with better power conditioning.

     – Luke Pighetti Oct 03 '23 at 20:48

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