Recessed lighting is dim when it works
I did some remodeling in my living room (tore out a wall to open it up a bit) and decided that I needed some more light. So I installed 3 recessed lights going down the middle of my ceiling. I ran these three lights to an existing switch box. I connected the lights in series to make things easier, and then connected them to a dimmer switch. The lights worked perfectly for about a week and then they would only work intermittently. I checked all of my connections, and they were all fine.
After a couple weeks of working off and on, they stopped working all together. So I changed out the dimmer switch with a different style. This one worked for several weeks, but the lights would never get as bright as they once did (they were always running around 50% - even when the dimmer was at it's brightest). Then after a couple weeks they stopped working. Since they were run in series I replaced all of the bulbs - didn't help. Tonight I took the dimmer switch out and hardwired the lights to permanently be on. While doing this I also crawled up into the ceiling and checked all of the connections. The lights came back on, but they are still at that 50% brightness.
I'm running 65 Watt flood lights on a 10kA breaker (120 volts). Will changing them to parallel fix my brightness issue? And should I take them off the dimmer or does that matter?