Lowes Deal Alerts & Discussion Thread

Incandescent lamps get a LOT hotter. Since LED lamps are more efficient, you can use a 60w LED lamp in a fixture rated for 60w incandescent max and still have some safety margin. A 9w LED lamp is way under the limit.

Totally escaped me how hot those incandescent lights were. Now I am not at all concerned about fire hazard possibility.

Wonder how cool those LEDs with rather bulky heat sinks are in comparison to ones without heat sinks.

I have some of each and externally they run at about the same temperature. I suspect though that internally the 99 cent ones would be hotter. Actually I know they run hotter because without a good thermal path there will be a larger temperature gradient from the source of the heat (the LEDs) to the outside of the bulb.

That being the case common sense says they should have different warranty.

In your post #154:

They are both rated at 16.4 years !? <===

Anybody have any ideas why the warranty is same?

Ability to heat sink well does nothing to reduce the total heat emitted; it only allows the bulb to shed that heat more efficiently. Given all else being the same the total heat seen by the fixture will therefore be the same either way.

It is entirely safe to use an LED bulb with the same output equivalency rating in an Incan fixture, although enclosed fixtures may reduce LED bulb life considerably. Incans can withstand almost any sane level of heat but LEDā€™s may not like the same situation. But for this kind of price theyā€™re worth a shot!

Phil

They may actually last longer than 1.8 years. Remember I proved, at least to myself, that the 2 pack of bulbs at 2 for $3.98 are the same exact bulb inside and out and yet they are rated at 4.57 years.

BTW, make no mistake, that is 4.57 years. Not 4.56 or 4.58. :smiley:
That just reminds me that I should take all of that stuff with a grain of salt :wink:

As to my post #154 where a massive heat sink version of the 1100 Lumen bulb had the same exact lifetime as a version with no heatsink just shows that a lot of these printed specks are just a ā€œcopy and pasteā€
In another thread Found: $1 LED light bulbs at Dollar Tree I made a passing inference to this with this picture. 3 manufacturers of 3 different 40W equivalent bulbs, Osram, CREE and Greenlite. All three packages had the same EXACT specs.
450 Lumens
72 cents yearly operating expenses
22.8 years service life
6 watts.
That is not a coincidence, itā€™s ā€œcopy and pasteā€

Weā€™ll probably be going to Loweā€™s today to get a GE ground bar kit because HD doesnā€™t sell them in storesā€¦ so maybe Iā€™ll find those 99Ā¢ illuminators.

Edit: nevermind we didnā€™t go.

Went to do some plumbing work on a good friends house across town today. Parts were to come from Lowes so as we hit the door I mentioned the $0.99 lights and how weā€™d missed them (Iā€™ve been sick a couple days, much better now). Then two displays chock full of them appear right at the front of the store :bigsmile: Another guy was looking at them as I explained Dchomakā€™s tear-down with these being the same as the ā€œbetterā€ ones. I didnā€™t need many so I got 2, my friend got about a dozen as did the guy looking at the lights who joined our conversation.

Oh, and the plumbing went smooth needing only one extra trip to get a copper fitting I was going to reuse but couldnā€™t unscrew from the old regulator. 3 wins for me today, quite a lucky day indeed!

Phil

I picked up a dandy Utilitech headlamp at Lowes today for only ~ $12.00.

It is a single-mode ( which is all I ever want ) three AAA with motion sensing .

Wave on , wave off .

I went ahead and DC-fixed the lens as it was too spotty for my taste even though the reflector is heavily textured .

Bright enough for any close-up task and simple UI .

Wave on , wave off .

Edit : I bought 20 of those $.99 LED bulbs also .

.
If your watching the right sort of movie it could have a strobe mode as well! :wink:

LOL,
I started reading your post and when I got to the end of the second line I realized it didnā€™t rhyme. Thatā€™s when I had to start all over again :slight_smile:
An advantage of the 99 cents bulb is that they a very light weight. There are certain fixtures that I have that donā€™t like heavy bulbs.

Several of the Lowes around here is clearing things out. What they clear varies by store, or least WHEN they clear does. Here are some pics


Canā€™t read that? Price is 45 cents for CAT6 cables, 7ā€™ long. They also had 14ā€™ long CAT6 for 85 cents

The regular price was $8.98 and $16.98

I also found 2 spools of CAT5e cable at $3.75 each



I need to stop by Lowes on my way home and look for network cableā€¦

OMG OMG OMG! GREEN WIRE CONNECTORS! :open_mouth: :smiley: :heart_eyes:
They are very useful and make any electrical box much tidier. Unfortunately they are always expensive.
Too bad the nearest Loweā€™s is a little too far awayā€¦ :frowning:
I wonder how long those prices will be around. Maybe theyā€™ll survive until we are able to go to Loweā€™s.

I got 5 of each length

I like the feed-through greenies with a hole in the center- they really make for a tidier box.

USA NEC now requires either a green wire-nut or a mechanical crimp sleeve tying all the grounds together in boxes with a single wire going to the switch or outlet ground terminal. An added non-feedthrough pigtail wire may go over the limit for wires allowed in that box while the feedthrough wire-nut wonā€™t.

Phil

With a green grounding wire connector, in a box where you have a cable in and cable out (line and load) and a metal box and a device, you can ground everything with no extra pigtails. Just wrap one wire around the ground screw of the box, and then connect it to the other wire with the other wire going through the connector to the device. You actually only connect two wires but it does the same thing as having two pigtails therefore four wires.

Some deals I saw at Lowes. Mostly stuff I needed to rewire the lights on my trailer.

These are incans, but I could plug in LEDs later


These were 7.98, then 3.99, then 1.98 and then I came along. Got it for $1.58
This is the water proof mounting hardware for the trailer connectors.

Black electrical tape would be handy for taping up connections. 30 cents a roll is a steal!

Needed some tiedowns for stringing the wires under the trailer

In case those werenā€™t big enough, I got some of these. They are HUGE

3 inch convex mirror to see around all that stuff Iā€™ll be dragging behind me.

Then a couple of months ago, Lowes cleared out a lot of sockets for cheap. So cheap at first that they changed their mind and raised the price a bit. Well alot of that stuff didnā€™t sell at that higher price. Here is a box full of what was left and priced at 25 cents per item.

Here is what I picked out for myself. 25 cents each!
Swivel sockets, claw feet and a 3ā€ 1/4 inch extention

Just some stuff I found walking around Lowes.
BTW, most of this stuff I have no use for, Iā€™ll buy anything IF itā€™s cheap enough. And the other day I was thinkingā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ Because I usually buy stuff I need at really really good prices, I can afford to buy stuff I donā€™t need at really really good prices. :laughing:



Filament bulbs of all types. I did NOT buy any of these

These are back on sale. This was the last day though, they are no longer available at that price.

A few of the Utilitech lights are on clearance at some stores. 3C 500 lumen $8.00, 9AA 1000 lumen $10.00.

Got a chance to mess with these today. The 3C 500 lumen is pretty nice and the build quality is much nicer then any of my Defiants. Great deal for under 8 bucks!!! I would pass on the 9AA 1000 lumen triple model but itā€™s still decent for only 10 bucks.