Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Anyone move to LED bulbs?

I will say that I've had better "luck" with smaller CFLs, but the larger ones have been suspect.

I tried the Philips 12W LEDs from Home Depot to replace the 100W incandescents in our kitchen. They're 'supposed' to be equivalent to 60W w/ an 800 lumen output. Surprisingly, they almost worked but since it's a main room light, it was just a tad too weak. I'm going to suck it up and buy the 17W 75W ones online. I think those'll work just fine.

I do understand that even w/ the costs amortized across the life of the bulb, it may still be more $ vs standard bulbs but it'll keep my bill from jumping from one power tier to another during the darker, winter months.

I did replace the closet 50W halogens w/ the Ecosmart 40W LED equivalents (8W) and those look great, not surprising since it's a floodlight application. That'll drop the closet from 150W to 24W, which will be significant because we forget to turn off that light for hours at a time.

Almost my whole house is CFLs, the only exception being two rooms (my office and the living room overheads) that have dimmers as well as some desk lamps, etc. I don't have a problem with the lack of instant-on... in fact, in the dark, I almost prefer the fact that they come on instantly to see where I'm walking...but at maybe 40~50% brightness... and go to full brightness within a minute to let my eyes adjust a bit. I don't know what the difference was in the electric bill, because quite frankly a much larger part of the bill is all the equipment that's on all day. Even our front porch lights (6 bulbs on wall sconces and three floods) as well as the floods on our sign out front are all fluorescent. Those, in the winter, might take a full five minutes to get up to speed, but they come on at dusk and go off at dawn, so I'm fine with the slower warm-up and I'm sure that they're saving a good amount on the electric bill.

One thing that I've done...and someone please correct me if I'm wrong here... is to pack much higher-output bulbs in the fixtures since going to CFLs. For instance, I might have a ceiling fixture that's rated to take two 60 or two 75-watt bulbs, but I've replaced it with two CFLs that are "100-watt equivalent". My rationale is that they're drawing less juice AND producing less heat than traditional tungsten bulbs...so what's the harm? I certainly appreciate the extra brightness. I have found that these CFLs don't last more than a couple of years, and I'm not sure if it's because they still don't dissipate the heat in an enclosed ceiling fixture or I just bought a bad brand in bulk when I first switched them all over 3-4 years ago.

I haven't converted anything towards LEDs yet (the bulbs are still too expensive), but I just purchased an under-counter lighting kit that was dirt-cheap and has fantastic reviews for the kitchen re-do and I bought a single under-counter strip to use for a rack in my office. This second one was 35% off at a nearby Lowes that's closing, and man, is it bright... almost too much... but will work well for the task light I needed it to be. That kit from Amazon (first link) sure isn't much to look at, and it's not as bright, but it's a really good value. That company ( Inspired LED) seems to have a very good reputation and great pricing on LED.

Just to clarify the light issue, a 75W incandescent bulb may put out more light (measured by lumens) than a rated equivalent 75W (actual 15W) flouresent bulb.
People make the mistake of thinking these wattage comparisons are perfectly equivalent to light output, but they are not.
Does it matter then if you need to buy a 100W (equivalent) F bulb to replace a 60W I-bulb?
No, b/c the F-bulbs pretty much all cost the same regardless of wattage so who would care?

In regards to the mercury, there is a good factsheet here:
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf
And the important thing to note are quantities.
Everyone on these boards sucks in more mercury every year from eating fish and breathing air than you would if you ever managed to break a single CFL bulb somewhere in your lifetime.
Secondly, the mercury in these bulbs are inorganic (not organic) in form and often bound in an amalgam (the organic form - methyl mercury, is the toxic material). Anyone here over the age of 40 who has teeth fillings should be more concerened about that mercury content than getting mercury from a CFL bulb breaking

Education people, education....let's not monger the fear eh?

Thanks, chesseroo. I've wondered about the mercury issue, and this puts it into proper perspective.

Nick is still The Man.

Tonight I'm trying to swap out the halogens on the kitchen hood. Right now they're 2 50W GU10 halogens. Going to try a 4W Ecosmart LED replacement. One big thing I noticed is that the original halogen is REALLY hot so replacing it w/ a cooler LED should help w/ the heat dissipation when you're standing at a hot stove.

The only thing I have done is swapped out my lights in my trailer for LED's, my battery now lasts much, much longer. My house has G10 base Flourescents in all fixtures and they warm up fairly quickly but I would like to try some LED's if/when I see some with a G-10 base.

Here ya go, Jay - Link

Canadian sites (there are more) - Link Link

Actually, I just replaced a 50W GU10 halogen with a 6W LED GU10 (rated as 20W equivalent) and it's actually brighter, though much whiter than the halogen. But it's WAY cooler (temp-wise, you can't even touch the halogen) and since it's the oven hood, don't really care about the specific color. It's the Ecosmart (Home Depot) brand and cost about US$20.