84 LED Bulbs so Expensive at £350!

[eveares]

So Order 84 LED bulbs in total from http://www.internationalleds.co.uk/ only for the total to come to £350. At least the shipping was free.

Half are for me and half are for my grandparents. At least I and my Grandparents will have no more incandescents. Rather have a total of 55 LED's in my house, and not 55 Incandescents.

Also the 12V MR16's seem to be one of the more expensive type of LED lights , I have 7 of them in total.

Also surprising the amount of different brands out there; I went for TCP, Kosnic and LyvEco, and Prolite.

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

At around £4.17/lamp you have done well, providing you have not purchased poor quality tack? If you were surprised by the overall cost, why did you go ahead with the purchase, unless you thought in the long run you would get your money back and/or save the planet?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Rather have a total of 55 LED's in my house, and not 55 Incandescents.

Surely if you're rich enough to afford such a large house then a few £'00 for lamps isn't going to be a concern?

 

[DaveHerns]

He must be in one of the rich bits of Surrey, unlike me

 

[big-all]

my advice is to replace the lamps in the most used areas
then in 6 months another 1 or 2 areas and every 6 months after that by the time you get to the last least used rooms or areas the prices will have dropped and reliability improved making better sense financially and practically

 

[ericmark]

Since the low heat output bulbs hit the market I have found quality and price and make have no relation to each other. I though Philips was a good make and swapped the light fittings to hold more bulbs and got 16 CFL for living and dinning room. These started to die rather quickly so my wife got 6 cheap CFL to replace the dining room ones with idea those Philips units removed from dinning room would keep living room going.

However the spares soon ran out and I had bought 2 x 1.8W LED's from Lidi so until I could get some more 8W CFL I fitted the 2 LED's. They were so good when Lidi did bulbs again I got 8 x 3W they did not have 10 but can't notice the difference between the 1.8W and 3W and they have outlasted the Philips CFL. However the 6 cheap CFL fitted in the dinning room are still going fine.

I got some very cheap 0.58W MR16 lamps from Pound World some GU10 and some GU5.3 being 230 volt and 12 volt. All the 12 volt ones failed. Fitted to toroidal transformer it seems they could not take the peak voltage. The GU10's are still going strong. I bought brighter GU10's from B&M bargain's three 3W for £10 they have done well, returned and no stock so got one 5W much more expensive but still cheap as LED's go and I could not see the difference to 3W. So tested using cameras light meter and what I found was the 5W was not an even light output as you went from centre out it got darker and darker where the 3W lamps were even.

From this experience I would never buy a load of lights together. Buy one if it's OK then get more of same. If not OK not too much waisted. I would look for voltage range if 150 ~ 250 volt clearly some switched mode device controlling the current. Simply 230 volt or 12 volt likely simple resistor or capacitor used to limit current so LED's more likely to blow and lumen per watt likely is lower than switch mode type.

Lumen is a complete waste of time. The CFL were 3500 lumen the LED were 2400 lumen but by a long way brighter. So again such and see is the only way. So idea of buying a whole batch of lamps together is likely going to present problems. Hight of room colour of walls and ceiling even carpet will change amount of light and type of light required.

I had to light a barn sized building and selected with advice low bay metal halide which worked well in 30 foot ceiling. So I then changed the fluorescent in lower building 12 foot ceiling to low bay metal halide which was a failure.

It would be great if you could simply remove a 100W pearl tungsten and replace with a 15W LED. However often it's a remove 100W pearl tungsten and replace with 5 x 3W LED's which means you also change the fitting.

 

[big-all]

yes thats another reason to do a bit at a time if a bulb isn't suitable for a lamp you can move it on and buy a different sort
buy them all at once and you stuck with perhaps 10% you dont like

 

[eveares]

unless you thought in the long run you would get your money back and/or save the planet?

Exactly. 41 For grandparents, 6 for Aunt, remaining 37 for me.

my advice is to replace the lamps in the most used areas

But there all done now...or at least they will be when they arrive.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

From this experience I would never buy a load of lights together. Buy one if it's OK then get more of same.

Been there, done that, with CFLs.

My experience:

By the time I need to get more, I can't remember where I fitted the 'trial' ones, or what I thought, and they are no longer available anyway.

 

[big-all]

my advice is to replace the lamps in the most used areas

But there all done now...or at least they will be when they arrive.

information more for others reading the thread

 

[Iggifer]

I'm also a big advocate of 'replace on fail' when it comes to going from incandescent/halogen to LED.

You would probably want to do a room / section of a room at once, but it spreads the cost out and doesn't make it feel like you're spending £350.

@eveares why not take this opportunity to ditch the 12v and go to a 230v LED lamp? Seems like now would have been the ideal time

 

[eveares]

@eveares why not take this opportunity to ditch the 12v and go to a 230v LED lamp? Seems like now would have been the ideal time

Because;

1) Downstairs bathroom has got floor boards/stud wall above it where the upstairs spare bedroom is, and would be impossible to get to the wires under the floor boards without a lot of work.

2) Because the light fittings in both upstairs on-suite and downstairs bathroom are in Zone 2 including the lights above the showers and that would mean the expense of getting IPX5 fittings.

 

[ericmark]

@eveares why not take this opportunity to ditch the 12v and go to a 230v LED lamp? Seems like now would have been the ideal time

Because;

1) Downstairs bathroom has got floor boards/stud wall above it where the upstairs spare bedroom is, and would be impossible to get to the wires under the floor boards without a lot of work.

So how will you change the "electronic transformer" for a "LED driver" if you can't get to the wires? There is a slim chance it is a toroidal transformer and it will work with low wattage, but in the main we have switch mode power supplies which have a lower limit and often will not work with LED's as a result. Also in the main we supply 12 volt LED's with a ripple free supply, I am sure my 12 volt LED's failed due to the peak to peak voltage from the toroidal transformer being too high even if the RMS voltage is 12 volt. With an "electronic transformer" which is really a switched mode power supply the peak voltage could be higher than with a toroidal transformer so unless using 10 ~ 36 volt lamps it could damage them.

 

[eveares]

Well this is the type of bulbs I have ordered for the bathroom and this is the SMPS's I have; the SMPS are rated down to 0w and the bulbs have got "AC" specified for the current under electrical data so I assumed there would be no issue?

What are my other options if you foresee a problem?

 

[Iggifer]

@eveares why not take this opportunity to ditch the 12v and go to a 230v LED lamp? Seems like now would have been the ideal time

Because;

1) Downstairs bathroom has got floor boards/stud wall above it where the upstairs spare bedroom is, and would be impossible to get to the wires under the floor boards without a lot of work.

2) Because the light fittings in both upstairs on-suite and downstairs bathroom are in Zone 2 including the lights above the showers and that would mean the expense of getting IPX5 fittings.

Transformers/SMPS almost always come out through the downlight hole, with the model you have and the fact you previously had halogen lamps in the fittings, there's bound to be one transformer per lamp, so it should be a breeze to remove the transformer.

Furthermore, I think you'd probably find you want IPX4 fittings, and personally I wouldn't dream of having non IP fittings directly above a shower or not. You're inviting steam and moisture into both the void/loft and now into the LED lamp. And there are no special requirements for zone 2 anyway.