LED Bulbs - Worth it yet?

ocleroux said:
I need to replace two lights in my room. Do you guys know if Checkers or P&P will have it. I dont know of a hardware store close to me....not that I would anyway if there was :-)
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Usually checkers or picknpay hypers are cheaper at times I find, so worth a look there not sure if they stock them.
 
ocleroux said:
I need to replace two lights in my room. Do you guys know if Checkers or P&P will have it. I dont know of a hardware store close to me....not that I would anyway if there was :-)

Also...do these fit the standard "connnectors" or whatever they are called? You know...you get either the screwy ones or the ones with the little pins on the side that twists and clicks in?
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Just for information purposes for anyone that doesn't know: screwy type is called Edison Screw (ED) and the ones with the 2 little pins sticking out is Bayonet Cap (BC).
 
Awesome thx for all the feedback :D will start replacing a few and see. I have a bunch of student communes and pay about R15 000 per month to eskom, would like to cut that down. These cheap CFL ones blow out every 15minutes anyway. Out of the 8 that was working 2 months ago, there is now only 2 left standing.
 
Greggle said:
Not to change the subject, but I've been finding recently that Builders Warehouse is actually pretty darn expensive. A 1/2l of Hammerite paint that I bought was R25 more at builders than another hardware store about a km away.
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+1 We bought a new shower head yesterday, and seeing as we had to get a couple of things, we picked one up at BW for around R600-. The same one at a tile and plumbing warehouse cost us about R150- less!! Crazy!!
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
With electricity prices the way they are, and looking to only get worse, it won't be long before you recover the initial expense and start saving on electricity. They're probably best suited to areas of the house where the lights are used the most - for example the kitchen, lounge, and maybe outside.
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I'd love to see actual sums... the 6w Edison for R275 is equivallent to 60w incandescent... whats that in 'energy saver' flouro - about 15w?
So perhaps around 40% less power. So for a light in winter where it's turned on at 5pm and off at 11pm:
6w x 6 hours = 36wh per day vs 15w x 6 hours = 90wh per day...
x30 = 1.08kwh per month vs 2.7kwh per month... saving of 1.62kwh per month
Electricity is going up to around R1-40 per kwh if I'm not mistaken. Thats a saving of R2.30 per month per globe over flouro energy savers if I'm correct.

Cost of globe = R280 vs R15 = R265 more
265/2.3 = 115 months (9 years) to make up the difference, excep that in 9 years you are likely to use at least 9 incandescents (if not more)... let's say you buy 5 incandescents in 5 years = R15 * 5 = R75... and 1 LED bulb lasts this long...
So there is R205 to make up over 5 years
2.3 * 50 months = 115...
So over 5 years you save R90 per bulb. Of course in 9 years, electricity will go up again.

Theoretically the LED bulbs last longer than the flouros but that's also what they said about the flouros vs incandescent and that was a load of cods. I'd be willing to bet that LED bulbs do indeed last longer, but there would be some sort of circuit to drive the array of LEDs and that is likely more prone to destruction over time than the LEDs themselves.

It's really not that attractive IMO. You are bound to get the odd dud bulb too, then there's the brownouts and surges that will destroy sensitive LED driver circuits. Having said that, I'm not that overt to replacing my bulbs but want to see reasonable prices.
 
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ocleroux said:
Blocked on my pc...but I can imagine what it means! haha. Was not intentional...perhaps I should have used the term "Love Nest" instead haha.
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ROFL Give it 5 years and Love Nest will be NSFW
 
BrokenLink said:
Awesome thx for all the feedback :D will start replacing a few and see. I have a bunch of student communes and pay about R15 000 per month to eskom, would like to cut that down. These cheap CFL ones blow out every 15minutes anyway. Out of the 8 that was working 2 months ago, there is now only 2 left standing.
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They remind me of stiffy disks - they got worse and worse as time went on - eventually they were worse than the floppies that they replaced and were supposed to be more reliable than.
 
I'd love to see actual sums... the 6w Edison for R275 is equivallent to 60w incandescent... whats that in 'energy saver' flouro - about 15w?
So perhaps around 40% less power. So for a light in winter where it's turned on at 5pm and off at 11pm:
6w x 6 hours = 36wh per day vs 15w x 6 hours = 90wh per day...
x30 = 1.08kwh per month vs 2.7kwh per month... saving of 1.62kwh per month
Electricity is going up to around R1-40 per kwh if I'm not mistaken. Thats a saving of R2.30 per month per globe over flouro energy savers if I'm correct.

Cost of globe = R280 vs R15 = R265 more
265/2.3 = 115 months (9 years) to make up the difference, excep that in 9 years you are likely to use at least 9 incandescents (if not more)... let's say you buy 5 incandescents in 5 years = R15 * 5 = R75... and 1 LED bulb lasts this long...
So there is R205 to make up over 5 years
2.3 * 50 months = 115...
So over 5 years you save R90

Theoretically the LED bulbs last longer than the flouros but that's also what they said about the flouros vs incandescent and that was a load of cods. I'd be willing to bet that LED bulbs do indeed last longer, but there would be some sort of circuit to drive the array of LEDs and that is likely more prone to destruction over time than the LEDs themselves.

It's really not that attractive IMO. You are bound to get the odd dud bulb too. Having said that, I'm not that overt to replacing my bulbs but want to see reasonable prices.
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I agree with you on the math, purely based on wattage you can save a lot more by replacing a geyser or something rather than all the bulbs.

However im looking for them around R120, have seen some i think. 6/8 CFL`s i put in in January have now blown. So if you have to buy 5 off them over the lifetime of a LED they work out around the same price.....with lower power. But they are the future i think, just gotta get mass produced so the prices come down. I pay around R15 000 for water and electricity per month......so even 10% saving is quite significant for me. But yeah spending R10 000 on bulbs seems a bit excessive :D

They remind me of stiffy disks - they got worse and worse as time went on - eventually they were worse than the floppies that they replaced and were supposed to be more reliable than.
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Yeah, they didnt use to die this quickly. I do suspect, and this was also mentioned by my electrican, that its more related to the power being a bit more unstable. More noisy. I have had several CFLs go out, come back, die again for a while, then come back again. Maybe they only switch on at 240V :D need that spike!
 
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