Light Dimmer with an EasyTouch system?

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My husband and I are in the middle of building our first pool so please excuse me for not using the right terminology - this is all new to me...

We would like to put our pool lights on a dimmer for flexibility. We have 2 500W Pentair lights and a Spa Brite light in the Spa. We also have an EasyTouch system. The pool builder says that the dimmer won't work because of the EasyTouch system.

I understand that the EasyTouch remote won't support the dimmer, but is there anyway to put a dimmer switch on the back end by the equipment pad that would have to be set manually? For example, if we want to dim the pool lights to around 300W each, we would manually set the dimmer at the equipment pad. When we turn the lights on with the Easy Touch remote it turns the lights on at 300W each. If we increase the dimmer at the equipment pad to full strength, the next time we turn the lights on with the remote it turns the lights on at 500W each.

What kind of relay/dimmer switch would I need to get for this scenario to work? Is it something I can do or do I need an electrician?

Thanks in advance for any help!!!!

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

As long as the light and the dimmer are compatible with each other, and the dimmer is installed after the EasyTouch, and the dimmer doesn't mind losing power, then it could work. Dimmers for 500w bulbs get fairly hot. You will need to make sure the enclosure it is in can can handle the heat.

All in all, quite possible, but some though needs to go into making sure everything is compatible.

 

[CraigMW]

All of this assumes that the lights are of the 120V variety. 12V lights require a transformer and some dimmers don't work well with inductive loads.

The cheapest way to do this would be to wire a single or double gang outside J-box using flex conduit below the EasyTouch panel with one 1000W or two 600W dimmers. I strongly suggest these be of the metal variety to deal with the heat that Jason mentioned. If you have only one cable going to the lights, then they are wired together, and you will have to go with a single dimmer. If you have two separate wires going to each fixture, you could control them with separate dimmers, or with a single dimmer, your choice. The light circuit should be run from its own GFCI breaker in the EasyTouch panel. The circuit should run from the GFCI breaker to one of the Aux relays, and then from the relay to the outside J-box via 12 or 14 gauge wire (black from the load side of the relay, white and green from their respective terminals).

In theory, you could probably purchase the Intellitouch dimmer and get it to work by replacing the Aux relay that controls the lights with one. The EasyTouch doesn't have the logic for the dimmer, but I bet it probably functions like the SAm/SAL and Intellibrites. Since the dimmer is controlled by an Aux circuit, which is just on or off, the Intellitouch probably sends a series of on/off pulses as it does for Intellibrites. There are only 8 dim levels, so this makes sense. You could just assign the light to an Intellibrite function in the Easytouch and use the Light menu to control it (e.g. if 4 pulses = 50% dim, something like Carribean mode would be the equivalent). It would require some experimentation of course. Unfortunately, those Intellitouch dimmer modules are around $200 though.

 

[blakeusa]

I would go with LED pool lights like Intellibrite and through the colors you can make your pool any color you want. I would use dimmers on outside lights to control the mood of the pool area.

 

[schulrog]

Just to answer the intellitouch dimmer relay in the easytouch question after having found this online. it doesn't work. will probably just wire the pool lighting to z-wave dimmers. it's such a shame easytouch doesn't have that functionality and actually is a little surprising to me.