LED tubes

[Brad]

We needed to replace the 8 fluorescent tubes in our kitchen. We decided to look at LED lighting instead.
We didn't find any LED fixtures we liked but did find some LED lights that go into a standard 4 ft fluorescent fixture.
You need to do a bit of simple wiring as the LED lights don't need the ballast.
Took maybe 45 minutes to replace 4 fluorescent tubes with the LEF tubes and do the wiring.
The 4 LED tubes give far more light, and whiter light, than 8 new fluorescent tubes would give.

I hate the cost of LED but I sure like the light.

 

[Ian]

Ditto to both cost and liking. LED will get more affordable as it becomes the new normal, so in the meantime I'm just replacing CFLs with LEDs as they burn out.

 

[Rick]

You may hate the cost of the LED's but your electric bill will thank you. I put a four foot dual tube LED replacement in my laundry room and now need sun glasses in there. It uses the same power as a 60 watt incandescent bulb but it has 160 LED's in 5 strips. I have replaced every single bulb inside and outside my house with LED's.

 

[Brad]

We are well on our way Rick. And yes, they are bright. If we replaced the other 4 tubes in the kitchen with LEDs we would probably need sunglasses in there.

I do love the bright, white light.

 

[Rick]

I did it one or two at a time over a year or so. Whenever I got to Lowes or HD I would get one. Yep, white light is much easier to see with than the yellow of incandescent.

 

[RicinYakima]

Being an active RV'er, when I bought my new 5th Wheel in 2013, one of the first things I did was strip all the incandescent light bulbs and replaced them with LED's. I can now dry camp for three days without a generator compared to two days. I save enough to run the kitchen fan, TV/DVD player and recharge cell phones and lights, just by changing to LED's.

 

[Brad]

That is a significant difference.
I was looking more at length between changes and nature of the light than cost savings in electricity.

Based on others reports here I just have to ask, why do people buy anything else?

 

[smokeywolf]

Love the LEDs. 2 tubes in the kitchen. 2 bulbs, 2 strips and 2 desk lamps in the living room. I have 6 4 ft. and 6 8 ft. fluorescent tubes in the shop. Not changing that until we have moved. Will likely follow Rick's lead and go with LED illumination inside and out.
I particularly favor the whiter almost bluish light of at least 4500 degrees Kelvin.

 

[Rick]

That is a significant difference.
I was looking more at length between changes and nature of the light than cost savings in electricity.

Based on others reports here I just have to ask, why do people buy anything else?

I suspect it won't be much longer and no one will be buying anything else. Yep, they are more expensive but the pluses outweigh the cost by a wide margin. Better question is why is the gubment still pushing curly Q fluorescents?

If the LED's in fact last as long as they are billed to last I have probably bought and or changed my last light bulb. The electric savings with LED is significant. My kitchen has 6 can lights in the ceiling, there were 6 75 watt incandescent spot light bulbs, that's 450 watts every time I flipped the switch. I replaced those with 75 watt equivalent LED's that use 13 watts each or a total of 78 watts, 372 watts NOT used AND I have far more light and better light. Another big plus with the can lighting in the ceiling/attic is that incandescent gets really hot, the LED's get barely warm. Add up savings like that throughout the house and it's a good question, why does anyone buy anything else?

 

[RicinYakima]

The only negative is the up front cost. My 5th wheel change over cost was about $150, and that was buying off the internet that saved me 50% from local purchase.

 

[Rick]

A word of caution for anyone considering purchasing LED's. Read the label and make sure your getting the correct bulb for your intended use. There are many types of LED's, dimmable and not as some cannot be used with dimmers, interior and exterior bulbs. They've been coming out with an ever increasing variety of bulbs, kinda new is the 3 way bulb for lamps with the 3 way switches.

Cree brand
30/60/100 watt equivalents.
30 = 3 watts of power
60 = 8 watts
100 = 18 watts

Cree brand sold by Home depot is the only brand I'm aware of that is U.S.A. made. Rick likes that.

 

[Ian]

Cree screw-in bulbs also are the only ones I'm aware of that offer the feature of shining light toward the base instead of just out the end. This means in a table lamp with shade that they will actually throw light onto the table and not just out the top. Also, they look better in a ceiling fixture with lightly frosted dome glass.

 

[GaryN]

I was hoarding incandescents a few years ago when I found out about the bulb ban. I really didn't like the CFL's. I tried a few. Some burned out within a month. I still have a bunch of incandescents but I do like the LED's. I just buy one here and there. I can use my hoard for heat lights outside to keep the chickens warm.

 

[Pistolero]

Sticking with conventional bulbs, not willing to pay the ridiculous prices for LED bulbs at this point. I have
been using QUALITY florescent bulbs in my cabin in Colorado for 20 years, and have yet to replace one, but they
were expensive when I bought them, seems like $10 each back in 1995. Solar power means that incandescents
were not workable.

I bought a whole bunch of bulbs when I heard about he ban, paid something like 29 to 50 cents for them, will last
me a long time. Have some current production CFLs that are OK, but a lot (most?) of them nowdays are just trash, slow starting, long warmup
to full light, short lives.

Replacing the old dead 96inch commercial fixtures in the garage, put in by the previous owner with modern electronic
ballast 4 ft florescents and happy to have them. LEDs are great for flashlights and I have bought a roll of them for
undercounter lighting, but not ready for most applications yet, IMO.

Just seriously rubs me the wrong way for some SOB in DC to tell me what kind
of light bulbs I can buy. That is just not right.

Bill

 

[Rick]

The gubment had nothing to do with me switching to LED but I do understand what your saying. The gubment is still pushing CFL's for some strange reason. If I had no choice but to use CFL's my house would be dark, ain't happening. My switch to LED was because they really are better. You get better light in that it's white light opposed to yellow light. You get more light in that they are brighter. They use FAR less power, the batteries in your Colorado cabin will last much longer using LED than they will using florescent. The prices are starting to come down on the LED's, no way to know how low they will get but they are getting less expensive.

 

[Brad]

I like LED for the long life, bright white light, and the instant on. No slow warmup like the CFL bulbs we had. LED is either on or off, CFL started dim and took time to come up fully.

I am also liking the lifetime. With can lights in a cathedral ceiling that are a pain to replace I like the fact I can do so every decade or so, not every 6 months.

No greenie here, just a guy who saw the practical advantages and decided to make a move.

 

[Pistolero]

Properly made compact florescents last essentially forever. I have two bulbs that I bought in the 1977ish
time frame to try out the technology. Kinda big by today's standards, but fine for a lamp. They are a bulb
base with the electronics and a about 7-8 inch diameter ring florescent, all packaged to fit in a medium to large
table lamp. These have been in normal home use for over 30 years, still start quickly, give nice color light
and have lasted long enough to be a problem for the company making them, I would bet. My second
generation compact"er" florescents used in the cabin were purchased in about '95-96 and were quite expensive
for the time. IIRC, list price was about $18 each, but we found a big box store going out of business and
bought about 15 of them for $10 each, still expensive. These have been in use in the cabin since then, have
had not a single bulb failure. Of course, we are only there a small portion of the year, so compared to a full
time home, use is much less. These are just a bit larger than normal bulbs, in a glass envelope.

One possible issue with LEDs is that the light is extremely narrowly spectrum, not broad spectrum. If you look at a
spectrum of a LED it will have several different color LEDs put together to make a rough approximation of white
light but it is really only a few extremely narrow frequency bands, literally spikes on a spectrum that it makes.
I have always wondered whether this extremely abnormal light will have long term effects on humans. Seems
fine in the short run but is WAY not normal light.

When my stock of incandescents are all used up, and the quality CFLs in place burn out, I hope that LEDs are lower in price.
At this point, the combination of lots of good stuff on the shelf, extreme cost of LEDs and finally that nasty burr
under my saddle of government compulsion all add up to NO SALE for me.
I'm just about hard headed enough that if the government ordered me to have ice cream once a day, I'd
figure out a way to keep from doing it. Don't want the bureaucrats telling me what to do!

Not sure that the garbage Chinese CFLs aren't part of the plot to force LEDs on us. Current
China production are really just junk.

Bill

 

[John]

We had 7 can lights in the Kitchen with 75 watt bulbs in them. Then there is the fact that they could not be insulated over due to fire hazards from overheating and a Montana location. Our kitchen with a tile floor would be 10-15 degrees cooler than any other room. It has 8' of boiler register so plenty of heat output it just flowed up too fast. We went to LED's with a spring that holds them flushh against the ceiling and the temp stayed normal as well as the savings in electricity.