My adventures in LED home lighting

Damn good reading and a regular cornucopia of tips & information. Missed it the first time.

I've put in a number of the 'egg yolk' style cheap budget Chinese LED light bulbs in my house and have been extremely pleased with them! The tint isn't perfect, but it is still very useable. I have had three failures, but in each case, it has just been a single LED that has died. I suspect it was due to the poor contact between the LED base and the heat-sink. I was able to purchase a pack of the bare emitters cheap from eBay, so I now have enough spare LEDs to keep these lights running for a very long time.

Have a recommendation for some GU10 lights? I'd like to replace some 50W halogens in a track light in our bathroom. Needs good CRI for my wife to do her makeup.

Manafont no longer has the same SKU lights as I originally purchased, but these look exactly like the ones I have, and have been very happy with:

http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/gu10-41w-4led-warm-white-light-bulb-p-6850

Manafont's listing states that these bulbs are rated for 220V. I'm not certain if they would run from a 110V US power source, but many of these types of bulbs will operate at both voltages. You might be able to get a clarification from Manafont if interested. (https://www.manafont.com/ask_question.php?sku=7387)

This type of light does have a much more focused 'spotlight' type of beam than the high-wattage Halogen bulbs. These work well enough in the kitchen, but I'm not certain if the CRI is good enough for makeup application. One of the four I have experienced a bad LED as I mentioned above, but replacing the LED was easy. I have been using these lights for a year now with no additional issues. These are heavily used as well, with several hours of runtime every day.

Thanks. I put in an overhead light for room lighting as needed and so that we don't use the halogens much . . so a tight focus shouldn't be a problem unless 2 in the face end up creating shadows.

We're using an electronic dimmer on the track lights which is flat to the wall to encourage use of the overhead. And 1 tap only brings them up to about 35% for those who don't get the message. :)

Basically impossible to find local LED replacements in GU10 with anything beyond about a 20W equivalence.

Looks like some possibilities on eBay . . but, it's eBay . .

I had to build my own fixtures to replace the 50 watt/900 lumen MR16 bulbs. I used some 85 CRI bridgelux arrays that output around 1200 lumens. My driver is a schotky diode bridge, 105C 1000 uF cap, and a ballast resistor mounted on a custom PC board. The fixture is built around a Nuventix heat sink, Ledil reflector, 56mm coated UV camera lens filter, plumbing o-ring to hold the filter/reflector in. I stainless steel lamp swivel suspends the fixture from the ceiling can.

The brightest bulbs that you can find in the MR16/GU10 form factors is maybe 300 lumens. Beware of the Chinese bulbs. They are vastly overspec'd and the have really poor CRI (unless you like zombie corpse puke coloring).

Bridgelux has some new very high (98+) CRI led arrays (500-5000 lumens) in their Decor line. I think they are all in the 24-36V range.

High CRI bulbs are highly recommended for use in the kitchen... nothing sucks like cooking good meat under a crappy CRI bulb. I replaced all those Chinese PAR20's in my kitchen with some awesome Sylvania 10W/550 real lumens/95 CRI bulbs. They were $40 each (and damn well worth it). They put out more light than the 50W halogens.

I just got those 48 inch fluorescent replacement LED tubes installed under the guest house counters. It turned into a real pain in the ass! I removed the old ballasts and installed new T8 tombstone lamp holders. They have to be wired with 18 gauge solid wire. Pretty much unobtainium off the shelf these days. My local bulb/battery supply store (evssupply.com in Richardson, TX) came through with an old, dead 8 foot tube ballast that had long enough wires.

I was going to do some hacking on the pins on the ends of the tubes to rotate them 90 degrees so they would shine downwards, but didn't need to. They throw enough light mounted sideways to beat the old fluorescent tubes.

I forgot to mention another benefit of LED bulbs... they don't seem to attract flying bugs nearly as much as incandescents.

It looks like Sylvania is coming out with some 10 watt, 500+ lumen PAR16 dimable bulbs (85+ CRI). Probably at least 40 bucks a pop... those 800 dollars worth of crappy Chinese bulbs may not be long for the Technoshack.

This thread is lacking pics. Thanks tho, interesting post, shame we have totally different fixings over here.

Texas, do you know if the $20-40 led bulbs at sams and costco are any good?

Im looking for something that can be used in a regular lamp stand. Those par20s look like theyre for recessed lighting.

the par38s from costco i have are OK. it has a tan/rose hue roughly around 4000k and is a fairly narrow flood like it says. it has limited applications because of its large size and spotlight

I don't shop at Sams/Costco, so I don't know what they sell.

Almost all the bulbs in my house are in recessed fixtures. I used a few globe type bulbs in some shower fixtures (but could have used PAR20's) because I had the bulbs and they worked well in those fixtures.

The best globe type bulb out there right now seems to be that funky looking Philips bulb (looks like an orange flying saucer on the end of a screw base. (http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/lightcommunity/trends/enduraled/index.wpd)

You can get them (800 lumens) for around $25. They just released a new version (900 lumens, 93 CRI) that goes for $50, but has some heavy promotional deals available.

Hi jay, yeah i saw those too. But yes, too large.

Texas, thx for the link. That bulb seems to made with luxeons. Ill check them out...less than $25 on amazon.

I saw them at Lowes's or Home Depot (don't remember which) for around $28 the other day when I was on my quest for 18 gauge solid wire to redo some fluorescent fixtures to take LED bulbs.

I was thinking about using them in the attics and/or basement. But, I think I'll put those 5000 lumen LSG Pyramid fixtures that I got with a rediculous low-ball bid in the attics. Those'll make the critters scurry in a hurry.

I just blew two 13 year old air conditioner units last week ($6000 ea!). While deciding the cost effectiveness of high-efficencey replacements (hint, not very... the payback of a 14.5 SEER vs a 15 SEER 5-ton unit was over 25 years!) I analyzed my old electric bills (I have them archived back to 1999). It looks like my LED bulbs are saving $40-$60 a month in electricity alone. I was also spending over $250 a year on light bulbs (say at least $5 bulb every week) and about $200 a year on blown dimmers.

Figure around at least $1000/year savings all together. Even with my excessive learning curve spending and no tax/utility offsets the investment payback was less than 3 years. It could easily have been under a year if I only did the bulbs that were really used (who need LED bulbs in closets, showers, garage door openers, etc that are hardly ever used). Actually the garage door openers were well worth it... even special (and expensive) rough service bulbs lasted only a few months due to vibration killing the incandescent filaments.

I do like the brightness and tint of my PAR30 LED bulbs from Costco although one of them had one dead LED (out of six) after just one month. It is easy to get it exchanged for a new one there as Costco's exchange/return policy is excellent. I have heard them accepting returns after two years on various items.

Well, it looks like those bulbs are now available... suggested retail is only $229 ea, but you can get them for $105.03 Darn, once they get below $105.01 I'll bite Yeah, right...

Here is a simple lifetime cost calculator for upgrading to LED bulbs. It does not include the effects on your heating/cooling bill and equipment.

http://www.polar-ray.com/Savings-Calculator_ep_44.html

Well, it looks like I can bite! They quoted me a real price that actually makes sense. I ordered a box of 6 to start with... if nothing goes wrong will get 30 more.

I borrowed their distributor's sample bulb and it works VERY well. It puts out at least twice as much light as the Chinese 6 watt bulbs. It dims smoothly to almost full off (Lutron Diva dimmers). No funky shadows, fringes, twinges, ripples, or shades. And amazingly for a 10 watt bulb in a small form factor mounted in a semi-closed recessed fixture it only gets to 60 degrees C.

Two minor things that could stand to be improved are the 80 CRI spec (actually probably closer to 85 CRI, but those 95 CRIs I put in the kitchen spoil you) and if it was around 1/8" shorter the face of the bulb would sit flush to the front of the fixture. The Chinese bulbs are shorter and sit back about an inch in the fixture. That causes an annoying shadow around the edge of the beam.