Changing to LED lighting

I am looking to change the spotlights within my house from Halogen fittings to LED. I've been reading up and I think that the cost saving on our bills could be quite significant! I've read some things that put estimates at around 80-90% saving on lighting, with lighting estimated to make up about 2/3 of your average bill!

The previous owner was an electrician, and must have got a bumper deal on fittings because they are splattered all over and probably costing us a fortune!

We have MR11 and MR16 fittings (I think I counted about 80 in the house in total!) and as far as I know each and every one is on a separate electronic transformer.

I have checked the some transformers and they are rated from 20watts min (I'm assuming that they are generally similar throughout) and I've worked out that the new LED lights will not work with the existing transformers.

So, I am now at a position where I could either choose to;

1 - buy new LED transformers (drivers) to run new LED lights installed into the existing fittings and have them wired up into appropriate new combinations.
2 - buy new GU10 mains powered LED fittings and do away with the separate transformers completely.

I'd like to hear what peoples thoughts are on this and particularly what they think would be

a) the easiest
b) the most cost effective
c) the most energy efficient

option to take. Also, do I need to be aware of any further repercussions to my electrical system?

I'd also like to know if anyone has any recommendations for where to buy lights, fittings and or LED transformers from. My house is in Hertfordshire so brick and mortar stores not a million miles away - or websites would be great.[/u]

a) Philips Master LED!
b) Philips Master LED!
c) Most energy efficient will depend on your choice.

The Philips Master LED work with pretty much any transformer on the market so are literally just a straight swap

http://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/p...mps_Transformer compatibility explanation.pdf

I have seen lots running singularly from 20-60va halogen transformers with no issue whatsoever.

Granted they're not the cheapest to buy, but at the end of the day if you factor in buying new LED drivers / replacing with GU10 fittings and then the cost of a lesser LED on top of that they work out about equal.

They do 3 wattages, 4w 7w & 10w, which roughly equates to 20w, 35w and 11w respectively although I would say 4w is closer to 35w and 7w is getting pretty close to 50w and 10w is damn bright.

I would replace with the respective wattage you have now, you don't want to spend a fortune on LED's and realise they're not as bright as you'd hoped.

I would certainly do one room at a time, that gives you the option to change wattages / colour temperatures depending on how happy you are. I would not go out and buy 80 x LED's at once (super expensive).

Oh and, http://www.laukgroup.com/products-p...ghting/master-ledspotlv-d-10-50w-ww-mr16-36d/

A pretty good place to start, 50w, warm white (3000k) and a 36D beam angle (24 is very narrow)

£24.66 (+vat?) x 80 =

quite.

But even if you go cheap LED £10 + LED Driver £15 = £25

GU10 Fitting £5-10 + LED £10-20 = £15-30

It might also be worth looking into plastering over some of them and putting a few pendants in

the greatest saving will be from changing several down lighters to pendants
if you swap say 5x50w downlighters for a pendant with a 10w bulb it will be relatively cheap to install and save 240w per hour around 3 to 4p an hour 35p per 10 hours and around £100 a year at 7.7hrs average consumption over the year

Iggifer said:

quite.

But even if you go cheap LED £10 + LED Driver £15 = £25

GU10 Fitting £5-10 + LED £10-20 = £15-30

It might also be worth looking into plastering over some of them and putting a few pendants in

Click to expand...

I had considered losing some of the lights. Though our ceilings are about 2.4m and I just know that I'll end up whacking my head on anything I (read - the wife) decides to put in!

The good news is that even though we have lots of lights, and they all have individual transformers, some of the rooms have them on multiple circuits. I suppose that would mean I could even do them circuit by circuit.

Oh, except that the ones in the living & dining rooms need to be dimmable too! (I understand that I will likely have to buy a special dimmer switch)

Those Philips lights look great, but they are a heck of a lot for a lamp. And although it says they work with 99% of transformers, you know my luck will be that I have the 1% it doesn't work with!

I'm starting to think that the GU10 switch may not be such a bad idea. My brother in law has been talking about a few online retailers that do LED lamps for quite cheap (less than £10) so I should perhaps try to find out exactly where he's talking about.

Be wary of buying cheap + nasty LED's

First off you will probably get half (or less) the life rating of the Philips so in a way is a false economy.

You will also need to consider quality of light, light colour accuracy, beam angle, actual brightness (lumens) etc etc

Whilst £10 might seem like a good price up front, if you're replacing it in a year because it's failed, it soon becomes £20 and so on.

My whole belief in LED + Philips comes from being able to just put them up and forget about them. And I think the 99% is them just covering their ass, there's no way they could test them with even 10% of the transformers on the market, it's just safe marketing speak. I would wager they'll work with almost every transformer.

The Philips lamps are dimmable (cheap £10 ones likely wont be)

http://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/p...ools_literature/Brochure_MASTERLED_Sept12.pdf

take a look at page 18/19 for some good dimmer calcs

If the cost is an issue, you could buy say 5 or 10 now, and rather than replacing the whole lot in one go, just replace each of the old lamps as it fails.

RF Lighting said:

If the cost is an issue, you could buy say 5 or 10 now, and rather than replacing the whole lot in one go, just replace each of the old lamps as it fails.

Click to expand...

Quite agree. Would be interested in hearing your recommendations for MR16/GU10 LED's though. I know you're a fan of the Halers H2 but what about in terms of retrofit?

check your fittings too, 7W LEDs tend to be longer than a normal lamp (75mm in most cases), so may not fit into downlights etc

The Philips Master MR16's are the same size as a regular LED/halogen

Oh dear, you have to wonder how this didn't get found out sooner!? You'd expect them to perform safety tests before releasing a product onto the market!

Some of these faults are not design faults but the result of sub standard ( often counterfeit ) components getting in the supply chain for the assembly of the units despite the best efforts to keep them out.

luckily that wasn't the Master range I was recommending. The MR16 lamps are all plastic bodied.

I have some 7w GU10 Master lamps like that, got a bit excited thinking I might get some new lamps out of it until I saw it was only the 8w ones