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I've been installing Lutron Caseta dimmers all throughout my house. Everything has been fine except my back porch where I have two lights.
If I only put a bulb in one light, it works fine, dims, etc.
If I put bulbs in both lights, they either flash on and off, or pop and stop working.
Any idea what's going on?
I'm using dimmable LED bulbs for the back porch where I'm having problems. The rest of what I've changed over is built in LED cans.
There's a lot of garbage brands in the LED bulb game, and even if it's not a garbage bulb not all dimmer products are tested against all dimmable LEDs. One of these is likely your problem.
Fortunately, Lutron actually makes known compatibility information pretty easily accessible with a wizard that can be found here: http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Education-Training/Pages/LCE/DimmingCFLsandLEDs.aspx
If you are already using a bulb suggested by that wizard, then I'd start by trying to replace the dimmer with one that was already working inside to rule out a defect in that. If the dimmer is not defective and there's no compatibility problem, it must be either the wiring or the light fixtures themselves.
I've never installed one of those dimmers myself, but Lutron is a generally reliable brand. That's why I'm assuming it's incompatibility. But if you weren't using LEDs out there previously, it makes a wiring issue more likely - LEDs are more sensitive to wiring issues than other bulbs.
100% is the wiring. I had the same problem a couple of months ago with a switch+plug and a switch, sharing all of them one hot wire (???). When you put a bulb in one light... doesn't matter if it's the first or the second light? it works in each one of them? If one bulb works no matter in which light is connected, then (probably) the problem is because of the voltage, and how the wiring has been done. You must understand how the parallel and series circuits work. In a series circuit the voltage is the sum of the voltage of the individual components, in a parallel circuit the voltage is the same for all the elements (basic electronics). So if your line is 120v, and you connect a 120v light, everything runs smoothly, but if you connect 2 lights at 120v (for instance) in a series circuit, you have 2x120v (240v) in a 120v line. The wattage at half voltage is a quarter [Power = (E^2) / R], which means that if your lights runs at 20w (for example), in your case will run at 5w, that's why, when you connect one bulb it works like a charm, and when you connect 2, both of them are popping. That's my guess.
