Uggh…so tired of NOT finding the light I want, today went to Lowes to get an ethernet cable for the wifes computer…saw the Utilitech lights (cheapest of all the LED lights)…ALL in warm white.
I really like cool white, would actually prefer neutral light, but it’s very rare to get those
Says cool white…WRONG…warm white yellow from hell…so I am just going to make my own wide spectrum light (combine both warm and cool, resultant light is more or less closer to “neutral” as you can get.
Opened it up, aluminum plate same as these, has 7 1W emitters on them in series…going to order me some of these in cool white (debating on 3cool/4warm, or 4cool/3warm, probably would be better with cooler side)
Driver is wrapped in kapton tape…and the cooling fins are aluminum…if that thing shorted boy howdy will it zap you!
Click for full size:
Cheaper bulb I got has 30 SMD 5730’s in series (I think 5730’s)
I looked at the driver…VERY VERY unsafe…raw board, mains soldered on one end, DC volts on other…sticky tape to the plastic shell!
This is why I just gave up & stocked up on what incans I could, while they’re still “permitted” by the ruling class.
Cost-Benefit Analysis shows I’ll be dead before an LED becomes economically viable as an area light in my home. I don’t really need spot lighting except outdoors, where LEDs won’t put out enough illuminating power to be useful, even for their insane high prices.
Meanwhile, my 5000k CFLs make a lovely daylight white (not enough Mercury in them to scare me) for the camera & shop; and my despicable old incans work perfectly, just as they always have. The haters can hate all they want, I can still see better than they can. And I pay less (because of the totality of my energy efficiency plan) for electricity than they do, Every Single Day.
However, comma, if you’re going LED, mixing emitters as you are planning is the only way I have heard of to get a reasonable quality of light emitted from them, in aggregate. As to quantity of light, well… That’s why we EDC flashlights, isn’t it?
Just my two cents, and my home is all the way around the world from…
Have you measured the UV output of those CFLs? Many put out downright dangerous levels… and you’ll never know it. And the cool white ones seem to be the worst…
As far as doing the math… I did. Between bulbs. blown dimmers, and electricity I’m saving around $100 month. My investment in 300 LED bulbs has already paid for itself. I defy anybody to tell the difference in light quality between them and the halogens they replaced. And they put out more light… I measured before and after levels. I’ve had three LED bulbs die from infant mortality (replaced under warranty). I have not replaced a bulb in well over a year. I was replacing at least one halogen a week. And when a halogen blew in the kitchen, it usually took out a $36 dimmer.
I always end up having to mix bulbs of different tints… two 2700K, two 5000K. The result ends up looking a lot nicer than either one alone, but it only works in some types of light fixtures.
However, some of the recent Philips LED bulbs seem to put out pretty good-quality light all on their own. Not sure what they do differently, but in a few years maybe I won’t have to mix tints any more.
One of the bulbs I have actually contains what appears to be six Nichia 119A emitters. It all goes through a 6X TIR though, so the beam is too focused. I put some DC-Fix over the whole thing and improved it, but it’s still a tad bit too focused and a touch cooler than I’d like. It works pretty well directly above the kitchen sink though.
I am well familiar with your commitment to Going the Distance; and I bow to your experience.
However…
My worst-case power bill barely breaks $200. SWMBO never turns a light OFF, so I do. We are apparently quite lucky in that the incans, FLs & CFLs we use seldom burn out, and the incans around here cost pennies and nickels where CFLs cost dimes and quarters to the LED’s dollar bills. Assuming light-power-for-light-power equivalence, of course. We haven’t replaced one of the 10 or so fluorescent tubes in so long I can’t remember what they cost, and they were special-bought for their “pure white” 5000k color. We bought a brace of CFL “globes” (essentially CFLs in milky white balls) for the bathroom which died quite young, but they were on-and-off constantly. A couple of my friends have sprung for “cheap” Home Despot/Lowes LED bulbs (in the $15.00 range!!!) and bitch constantly about the ugly color or the dim, narrow cone of light. Quite lucky, I guess…
I have LED bulbs very similar to the bottom pics (the one in plastic bodies) and they don’t last long. Some even last for three weeks only and the common problem is that its capacitors would burst open. Hence these LED bulbs would actually cost much more than incans or CFLs in the long run.
The LED bulbs with with aluminum fins are much better and yes the cheaper ones have drivers wrapped with kapton tapes. At least kapton tape offer some resistance to heat and IMO is much better than scotch tape.
I don’t have a single omnidirectional/globe type bulb in my house. All 300 or so bulbs are PAR16/PAR20/PAR38/MR16’s in recessed can type fixtures… and there’s a damn lot of them. Narrow cones have no where to hide.
As far as dim… well the kitchen alone has over 12,000 lumens. Heck, there’s a closet with 6 x 1500 lumen bulbs. And 4000-8000 lumens in the bathrooms. And over 15,000 lumens in the garage (the only cool white bulbs in the house). We don’t do dim in Texas…
I was in Costco this weekend and they have some Feit LED bulbs that are labeled as 93 CRI. I got a few of the 2700K bulbs, but they also had some cooler bulbs also labeled as 93 CRI.
Seriously though, I’ve been looking a long time for high-CRI LED bulbs which aren’t so warm. Ideally at like 3500K to 4500K for one of the rooms I’m trying to light, since I already have a ton of 5000K Cree bulbs and they look pretty okay by themselves. Better when mixed with a warmer tint, but still okay alone.
… and a Costco recently just appeared somewhat near me. My friend can see it from his balcony, and he says it was an empty field one morning and then that evening a whole Costco building was there. Ninja Costco sneaks up when you’re not looking! (it turns out that the thing was hiding behind the glare of the sun in the morning)
Edit: The costco site only shows 2700K and 3000K Feit bulbs, and no info about their CRI. Meh. Too warm.
The bulbs I got came in a 3-pack. I don’t see them on the Costco web site. Mine were 2700K, but I can’t remember the value on the cooler version.
They look like this random picture I found on the internet, but they have a little emblem on the package showing the higher CRI. And mine are 60W equivalent, not 40W.
They also had high CRI spotlight style bulbs. I guess Feit has upgraded their line of LED bulbs.
