To downlight or not to downlight that is the question?

[Bahco]

THESE are good value and I like them.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

What are the warm up times like on those though, the ones I have in my shop although brighter take a time to warm up.

Warm-up time is impresive too - full brightness within a minute.

I want instant light.

And I want to drive a Ferrari with Claudia Schiffer naked in the passenger seat...

Seriously - is that "I want" as in just a desire, a strong preference etc, or an "I must have" for genuine reasons? Nothing wrong in principle with having what you want, but only you can decide how much you're prepared to pay to avoid a few seconds of light which is not at its eventual maximum but is nevertheless perfectly bright enough.

You're looking at nearly £700 for those LED lights.

And even so, they are still more expensive to run than the LED's although I can see that you wouldn't need as many.

Which therefore makes them cheaper to run.

Steve reports that 2 x 26W is bright in a 4.5 x 2.6 room. Your room is larger, but not twice as large in area or either dimension, and even if you needed 4 x 26W, they would still cost less to run then those LED ones. And cost nearly £500 less to buy.

Also, don't forget to factor in replacement costs - they quote 75,000 hours. What that means in the lighting industry is that by 75,000 hours 50% of them will have failed, it does not mean that you won't have to replace any until 75,000 hours have elapsed. Any individual lamp can fail at any time. You'll have 39 individual "lamps" in your 13 fittings. Presumably you'd not be happy with only 2/3 working in any fitting, so each time one fails you'll have to fork out nearly £60.

Until of course, they stop making them, at which point, because you can't replace the lamps, you'll either have to replace all 13 fittings or have a mix of styles.

but would like peoples opinions, pro's and con's please.

The other thing I would strongly advise is to go and see these lights in action in a representative setting. After you've put 13 holes in your ceiling and removed £700 from your wallet is not the point at which you want to discover that they have been somewhat economical with the truth about how bright they are, what colour the light is, and how well it does actually light up the room.

 

[Steve]

D'oh!! You all got there before me!!

Yes, those 2x13w downlights are bright from the outset. They start at around 75% output, and within a minute are at 100%. Even at 75% they are more than bright enough to work under. Obviously if the room is cold they will start dimmer, but this shouldnt be the case in a well insulated and heated house.

I might be experimenting next year with dimming ballasts on these fittings. Will let the forum know how this goes if I go ahead.

The qwikfast price is hard to beat for that type of fitting too - normally for that price you get switchstart and 50hz flicker.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

100Hz, surely?

 

[Steve]

100Hz, surely?

You know what I mean. Mains flicker. As opposed to HF which is several KHz.