Compact fluorescent light bulbs have a lot of advantages  over incandescents, but they’ve never been that good at dimming. Standard dimmers designed to work with incandescent or halogen lamps have failed at dimming CFL effectively without flickering or cutting out. According to James Sherman, director of residential marketing at Leviton Manufacturing, consumers had a myriad of complaints with standard dimmers. That is why Leviton, a leading manufacturer of Dimming Systems and electrical components is now introducing their new, patented Decora Slide Dimmer made just for dimmabel CFL bulbs. The new Decora dimmer has the ability to detect whether bulbs are incandescent or dimmable CFL’s, and the Decora can determine the individual bulb’s dimming capabilities – which differ according to manufacturer and type – and adjust the range accordingly.

• Smooth dimming from full to the lowest range @ 20% lumen output
• Flicker free at all times
• When turned on, dimmer will cycle to full and back down to last dimmed setting
• Self dimming on-cycle is @ 3 seconds
• Can handle both CFL & Incandescent

For customer who purchase lamps brands other than what the Decora was designed for, it has a manual setting override to make it completely compatible with any dimmable CFL Lamp. We found the best results when testing the dimmer with Prolume brand dimmable CFL’s which are available in Spiral – A Shape and Reflector types.

For more information, or to purchase the Leviton CFL dimmer, contact our sales staff at 877-220-5483

Over the years, we have always had a hard time understanding the decisions made by many electricians and customers. It seems like an everyday occurrence to come across a business who purchased the lowest price fixtures they can to light their business. Now that part we do understand, but it is the rest that we don’t. Most of the time when a customer buys based on price, they neglect the cost of operation.

Josey’s Poseys, an award winning Florist in Bradenton, Florida, had this exact situation when we met them. They were using 200 watt quartz halogen floods to light the exterior of their building. The light bulbs for these fixtures had to be replaced every 6 months, and had an annual operation cost of $131.40 per fixture. Synergy Lighting recommended switching to a Compact Fluorescent Fixture using natural daylight bulbs. In our recommendation we were focused on creating whiter, cleaner light as well as reducing the cost of operation.

Total cost of replacement was $170.00 for this project, and yielded a $571.79 per year, energy savings. The warranty for these light fixtures is five years, and the light bulbs should need replacing every two years.

For more information on replacing quartz halogen fixtures with CFL energy saving fixtures and natural white light, give us a call at 941-756-4844 or visit us online at www.synergylightingsupply.com

We received a call from a customer that his neon wasn’t working. No big deal we thought, and how would you like to handle it?, we asked the customer. The customer ordered a neon transformer and was going to change the transformer himself. That is until he realized that the transformer is 15,000 volts.

Neon repair is almost as simple as changing a light bulb or a ballast. In theory it is the same concept. However the ballast in a fluorescent light produces approximately 296 volts of electricity, and a neon transformer typically ranges from 7,500 volts to over 15,000 volts. The amp load on neon is very low, but there is enough potential to cause serious electrocution when working with electrical components.

Synergy Lighting provides all types of signage from Pylon and road signs to neon and LED. In this case the transformer was bad, but there was also a bad neon letter. Synergy has the capability to have made the reproduction of any neon letter, rod or design with a 48 hour turn around time and can color match any shade of neon.

For more information about neon repair or installation, visit our website at www.SynergyLighitngUSA.com or call us at 941-756-4844. Don’t be the one to get shocking results attempting your own repair, we only recommend using a Licensed Sign or Electrical Contractor.

Synergy Lighting Provides free delivery to the following areas:  Sarasota, Bradenton, Tampa, St Petersburg, Clearwater, Brooksville, Venice, Port Charlotte, Naples, Ft Myers and all surrounding areas.