LED room lighting (again)

[LEE]

Building Regs should really stipulate only LED lighting in new-build houses I think.  Conceivably every new house would be running a max of 100 Watts of lighting.

That and compulsory rain-harvesting for "grey water" use, Solar water heating panels and possibly Heat Pumps.

It's relatively cheap to install this stuff at the time of building, especially when you have economy of scale of a large development, but prohibitive post-build, on an individual basis.

I was looking at some of the large water butts (actually shallow, "under lawn" tanks) you can buy for rain harvesting and my one piece of advice is not to search on Large Butts unless you have Google safe-search on.

[tiermat]

Getting back on topic, I have been inspired to look at replacing the G4 lamps in our house (we have 3 light fittings that use them, and between them they use >30 lamps).

My first thought was "I don't know if they will be available" G4, 10 or 20W, 12V.

Sure enough you can get them, whther they are more efficient than normal halogens (the transformer might make the whole exercise pointless from a power saving viewpoint), or indeed if a couple of the fittings will work with them (we have at least one that doesn't work unless there is a certain load on it).

BUT, at £18 for 10 off ebay, it's cheaper than buying the "normal" lamps (£4 for 2 RING ones), so worth a punt.

When I am back up north I will count up exactly how many I need and have a stab at replacing them all (some are easier than others, due to the glass shades on the fittings).  Maybe it will stop TLD moaning about all the lamps that keep blowing in hers (mainly due to constant on/off cycle she puts her light through)

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Have just bought a supermarket LED 8w=40w bulb B22 BC, 470 lumens, 25 year life, 40,000 switching cycles. £9.

Works excellently.  I'll let you know if it lasts 25 years.

[rogerzilla]

My unbranded ones last an average of a year.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I would hope that in 25 years it'll be obsolete even if it is still working!

[Biggsy]

Elfin safety issues:

Dangerous GU10 LED Spot Light is Cheap and Bright but could Kill you: http://youtu.be/keaE7QTKTYE

LED Tube Lighting Install & Theory: http://youtu.be/saYtnaBp4QA

[David Martin]

Thanks for that - my kitchen ones are all MR16 12V (and I have to replace one of the transformers which will not be pleasant). I'll double check the bathroom.

[Feline]

Elfin safety issues:

Dangerous GU10 LED Spot Light is Cheap and Bright but could Kill you: http://youtu.be/keaE7QTKTYE

LED Tube Lighting Install & Theory: http://youtu.be/saYtnaBp4QA

To be fair it would could only kill you if you grab the bulb while it is turned on (who does that with a ceiling spot light?).
My GU10 LEDs are not bare like that one, although of course the innards could be similar, I've not taken one apart and wouldn't really know what I was looking at anyway. TBH I'm not really bothered since they are saving me a whole heap of electricity and I've no intention of touching them.

[Biggsy]

To be fair it would could only kill you if you grab the bulb while it is turned on (who does that with a ceiling spot light?).

A lot of people, when fitting bulbs - they don't turn the light switch off first (edit: or the switch may be wrongly wired, as David points out).  They'd have a 50% chance of shock.  Accidentally touching the front of the bulbs at other times would be dangerous as well.  Spot lights can be on walls as well as ceilings.

They'd be ok if you identified the neutral terminals on the bulb and socket, and stuck to the correct orientation, but typical consumers won't know to do that, and how to do that.  (The terminals are not marked).

By the way, the critical commentators (idiots) on YouTube have missed the point that the bulbs can be fitted the wrong way round.  Don't read the bottom half of the internet!

The other video about tubes also describes some products that can be dangerous - some only during fitting, and some that leave the housing live all the time after inadequate insulation fails.

[David Martin]

If you household wiring is wrogn (switch on the neutral rather than live) then this could be very nasty indeed. I've reposted elsewhere so hopefully people are aware.

[TimO]

... and, aside from the various ways you can come unstuck as described above, whilst it may be "safe" once installed, that assume that it's fitted out of the way, on a ceiling for example.  If fitted somewhere more accessible, on a wall, or in a tabletop lamp, it would be very easy to brush against it, and get a shock.

I'd also be very suspicious of a device designed and built to those lax standards.  Either the manufacturer doesn't understand how it's unsafe, or doesn't care.  Either way, I'd wonder what other gotchas may be lurking there, such as inadequately speced components (or even deliberately mismarked ones) that could fail in a dangerous fashion, and cause a fire, especially if the materials used are not adequately fireproof.

With something as iffy as this, there are so many potential failure mechanisms, that it's probably best thrown into the rubbish bin, rather than used on the mains.

[interzen]

Have just bought a supermarket LED 8w=40w bulb B22 BC, 470 lumens, 25 year life, 40,000 switching cycles. £9.

Works excellently.  I'll let you know if it lasts 25 years.

I recently picked up a bunch of Duracell-branded 8W/40W B22 bulbs at the local Asda for the princely sum of a fiver each - very impressed so far, and not just on the power consumption front either.

Not sure if the offer is still running, but if you're not wanting something stupidly bright that causes small creatures to spontaneously combust at 50yds then they're definitely worth a punt.

[fossil]

I have just purchased a set of six of theses http://www.beamled.com/bri-tek-3-3w-spotlight-bulb-gu10-equivalent-to-30w-120-beam-angle-true-retrofit.html

 the first order I put in I went for the "cool white"  as I thought I didn't want a dim room , how wrong was I ??
 OMG it was a blinding ice white light from out side it looked like I was running an arc light from the war !,
 a phone call to the company and I now have the "warm white" not yellow at all and theses lamps give a great spread of light fully illuminating our kitchen not like the std halogens .

 Very happy bunny

 Regards
  Ade

[spesh]

I have just purchased a set of six of theses http://www.beamled.com/bri-tek-3-3w-spotlight-bulb-gu10-equivalent-to-30w-120-beam-angle-true-retrofit.html

 the first order I put in I went for the "cool white"  as I thought I didn't want a dim room , how wrong was I ??
 OMG it was a blinding ice white light from out side it looked like I was running an arc light from the war !,
 a phone call to the company and I now have the "warm white" not yellow at all and theses lamps give a great spread of light fully illuminating our kitchen not like the std halogens .

 Very happy bunny

 Regards
  Ade

The wide beam angle's good, most of the LED spots I've been looking at have quite limited beam angles... I'll add those guys to my bookmarks folder for later reference. 

[Diver300]

I've just installed 11 of these:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007Z1ZOZI

to add to the 6 that I bought about a year ago. I've now reduced the installed lighting load in the new house by over a kW.

I think that the GU10 lamps give out nearly as much light as the 50 W ones they replace, but the light spread is better, so the extra light from the 50 W was wasted in overbright areas.

[Canardly]

As pointed out above I would take claimed life cycles with a large pinch of salt. However is the lighting of the future.

[Feline]

I used to have to replace a GU10 halogen bulb approx once a fortnight in my kitchen and utility room (8 of them). Since getting the same ones Diver300 linked to above I haven't had a single one go in well over a year now. I think they've already paid for themselves twice over 

I find myself now eyeing up the few remaining old style low energy bulbs left in the house wanting to replace them with LEDs, buts it's hard to justify that until they go, which they rarely do!

[Kim]

Never mind all this LED lighting business, what we really need are some dark-emitting-diode fixtures, to cancel out all those obnoxious LEDs that designers seem to think are a good idea to use as power indicators.  Or alternatively, use those ones for lighting, as they seem to be so good at it.

(I installed some new smoke alarms last week, and the unit that sits on barakta's side of the bed to do strobey vibratey things when they go off needed about 10 layers of masking tape to bring the brightness of its "mains power on" LED down from room-illumination levels.  Why would you put an uber-bright power indicator on a device that people are going to have next to their bed?)

[Diver300]

  Why would you put an uber-bright power indicator on a device that people are going to have next to their bed?)

Because the LEDs that you can get now are so much brighter than the ones that the product was designed with?

I am surprised you resorted to masking tape, not an additional resistor in series with the offending LED.

[Kim]

  Why would you put an uber-bright power indicator on a device that people are going to have next to their bed?)

Because the LEDs that you can get now are so much brighter than the ones that the product was designed with?

I am surprised you resorted to masking tape, not an additional resistor in series with the offending LED.

It was bed time, and I tend not to hack devices before they've had a chance to prove themselves not to be faulty, for ease of obtaining a warranty replacement.  But yes, that would be a better solution.

[Diver300]

I used to have to replace a GU10 halogen bulb approx once a fortnight in my kitchen and utility room (8 of them). Since getting the same ones Diver300 linked to above I haven't had a single one go in well over a year now. I think they've already paid for themselves twice over 

I looked at 10 of the GU10 halogens that I replaced. I found 7 different makes. I changed them for LEDs in less than a month after moving in, but the number of different makes implies that the previous owners were changing bulbs quite often.

[Cudzoziemiec]

We have 5x 50W GU10s in the kitchen. Only 3 of them work, the other 2 blew at least a year ago, probably 18 months, and we've no intention of replacing them as it's at least bright enough with the remaining 3.

[perpetual dan]

We have 12 fittings and 8 working, although one is a rather ineffectual and blueish LED I bought ages ago and barely counts as working.

The most satisfactory LED bulb I have is for a wall mounted candle style bulb in a shade. The directional glare is lost quite well and the colour is much nicer than the CF that it replaced.

[Charlotte]

7DayShop are now offering GU10 3.5W Non-Dimmable LED Lamps for £4.74 a piece - and cheaper if you buy more than one:

Clicky

I'm very tempted to switch our kitchen over to them - any reason why I shouldn't?

[tiermat]

7DayShop are now offering GU10 3.5W Non-Dimmable LED Lamps for £4.74 a piece - and cheaper if you buy more than one:

Clicky

I'm very tempted to switch our kitchen over to them - any reason why I shouldn't?

Those ones might be a bit harsh, as they have no diffuser over the LED.

For a similar price, with diffusers, get thee to Costco.