LED Lights

[Jola]

Just a warning - I have suffered from some damaged LED lights due to using existing (installed) transformers.

The LED lights use much, much less power (typically 3w compared to 50w), and as a result the transformers designed for halogen lights are under such low loads that they output voltages that are too high - LED's suffer damage when the voltage is 13.5 volt or higher.

The problem can be solved by installing, say, 8 or more LED downlighters on a single 20-50w transformer, or by using small 5w transformers where you are using a single light.

Or use GU-10 220v LED lights, then you don't need to use a transformer at all. This works out cheaper and more reliable, in my experience.

But as someone has noted, many LED lights, especially the cheaper solutions, are not as bright as halogens, so make sure that you know what you want.

At the moment I am using 84 LED bulbs to get a reasonable light output for a reasonable cost - the 1 or 3 LED high intensity lights are just too expensive to make economic sense.

 

[MontyPython]

Thats 12 of the 25... all in the lounge. Currently running 12 20w down-lights.

first time i've heard of a 20W downlight.
in that case:
option 1: use our 3W 3 LED downlight, it kicks the 30W halogen for lux levels.

option 2: might not be as good as above for lux,
but the 2W 38LED could do the trick. the reason is it has a 80 deg beam angle.
so what you lose on individually metered lux levels,
you score on the overlapping light at table or floor level.

options and variaties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[MontyPython]

At the moment I am using 84 LED bulbs to get a reasonable light output for a reasonable cost - the 1 or 3 LED high intensity lights are just too expensive to make economic sense.

I went to the lecture where this presentation was talked about:
http://www.sanea.org.za/CalendarOfE... 2010 (Presentation - Kannan Lakmeeharan).pdf

now the tariff increases for 2010/2011/2012 was announced last year.
so my assumption from the presentation is as follows:
2013 to 2028 eskom will ask nersa for increases ranging anywhere between 25 to 45% for 15 years.

that sounds like fun!!!!!

the 1 or 3 LED high intensity lights are just too expensive to make economic sense.

I THINK NOT

 

[Jola]

Just been looking at some of the ebay sites - seems that you now get these :

GU10 20 SMD LED HIGH POWER 280LM WARM WHITE BULBS

Surface Mounted Diodes, they are quite bright but are expensive.

 

[Goobie]

I also found the warm white not REAAALLLLY to my liking. It is better than the blueish white light normally associated with white LEDs, but the warm white has a slight greenish tint to it which subconsciously made me wanna puke. I thought it was only me until my wife also picked up on it.

 

[xrapidx]

first time i've heard of a 20W downlight.
in that case:

Yeh - it used to have 40w units, and then in attempt to get my remote control unit for the lights working, I found 20w bulbs at Game, they were quite a bit more expensive than the 40w.

 

[rsd]

Just been looking at some of the ebay sites - seems that you now get these :

GU10 20 SMD LED HIGH POWER 280LM WARM WHITE BULBS

Surface Mounted Diodes, they are quite bright but are expensive.

That sounds pretty much ideal. I've also been considering replacing my halogen GU10s with LED bulbs. Can you provide a link to those?

It's worth finding out what the actual colour temperature is, as well as the angle. Would suck ending up with cool white spotlights

 

[Jola]

That sounds pretty much ideal. I've also been considering replacing my halogen GU10s with LED bulbs. Can you provide a link to those?

It's worth finding out what the actual colour temperature is, as well as the angle. Would suck ending up with cool white spotlights

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140410447227&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I have ordered a few, will check them out - 280 lumens is quite bright, they should be good.

Specification:

4 Watts.
20 x 5050 SMD superbright LEDs.
Colour: warm white (colour temperature 2700K-3500K).
Standard 2 pin fitting.
Lens diameter 5cm; length 5.5cm (standard GU10 bulb size).
Approx. life 50,000 hours.
Light output: 280 lumen.
Comparable to 50W halogen.
Aluminium body.
Glass cover.
Voltage: 240V.
Beam angle: 120°.
C.E. approved and RoHS compliant.
Bulbs packed in individual retail boxes.
Note: LED bulbs should not be used with dimmer switches.

 

[rsd]

Sounds pretty good. Pity about the dimmer thing, all of mine are on dimmer switches, although I could change that in a few places.

Price is quite high, but you do tend to get what you pay for. Please post a follow up when you've received them and tested them out!

 

[Jola]

Sounds pretty good. Pity about the dimmer thing, all of mine are on dimmer switches, although I could change that in a few places.

Price is quite high, but you do tend to get what you pay for. Please post a follow up when you've received them and tested them out!

Yes, I will post when I receive the lights.

The cost is high, I am thinking of mingling those with the 84 LED conventional GU-10's, which are much cheaper. I may do this in a long passage, for example every third light is a superbright LED.

 

[Jola]

BTW, with respect to the dimmer thing, many of them say that you should not dim, but I have some on a dimmer switch, and as long as you only dim a little it does not seem to affect the LED's.

In fact, if you have oldfashioned transformers on there it may actually protect the lights, my LED's on the dimmer seem to have outlasted the ones without the dimmer (I was using the old bad transformers - obviously talking about 12v MR16's here, not 220v GU-10's)

 

[Jola]

Just an aside for those with cold houses, like myself.

Switching to these low energy lights definitely makes your house a lot colder, as the halogen's, for example, have a massive heat output.

 

[rsd]

Ok, so after a little poking around I have found what appears to be the same thing available directly from the manufacturer in China.

I have contacted them and requested price, shipping cost, minimum order and a sample. Will post again once I have some more info, lets hope they're good.

 

[MontyPython]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140410447227&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I have ordered a few, will check them out - 280 lumens is quite bright, they should be good.

have a look at this site:
http://www.unitconversion.org/illumination/lux-to-lumens-per-square-foot-conversion.html

did ebay not perhaps confuse lux vs lumen?

280 lumen = 3013 lux!!!!

280 lux = 26 lumen
the latter seem more likely if i look at my own comparisons found
at the bottom of the following page, 2nd last entry:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?218964-What-are-you-doing-to-cut-costs/page3

 

[MontyPython]

I also found the warm white not REAAALLLLY to my liking. It is better than the blueish white light normally associated with white LEDs, but the warm white has a slight greenish tint to it which subconsciously made me wanna puke. I thought it was only me until my wife also picked up on it.

Goobie,
http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/colour/colour-temperature.html
a nice colour temperature chart.

LED's come in 6000 kelvin (cold white/blueish)
5000 kelvin (daytime white, 10am to 2pm)
and 3500 kelvin ( warm white, sunset gold/orange)

if you cant find LED's in the colour you like, you havent found the right supplier yet



try my signature

 

[MontyPython]

Sounds pretty good. Pity about the dimmer thing, all of mine are on dimmer switches, although I could change that in a few places.

There are LED's available that have been manufactured to be fully, properly dimable from any normal standard wall dimmer. No need to change anything!

You just need to look in the right place

 

[Jola]

have a look at this site:
http://www.unitconversion.org/illumination/lux-to-lumens-per-square-foot-conversion.html

did ebay not perhaps confuse lux vs lumen?

280 lumen = 3013 lux!!!!

280 lux = 26 lumen
the latter seem more likely if i look at my own comparisons found
at the bottom of the following page, 2nd last entry:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?218964-What-are-you-doing-to-cut-costs/page3

I doubt that those figures are wrong, 26 lumen is really low light. Even my really old 28 LED lights give more light than that.

 

[MontyPython]

have a look at this site:
http://www.unitconversion.org/illumination/lux-to-lumens-per-square-foot-conversion.html

did ebay not perhaps confuse lux vs lumen?

280 lumen = 3013 lux!!!!

280 lux = 26 lumen
the latter seem more likely if i look at my own comparisons found
at the bottom of the following page, 2nd last entry:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?218964-What-are-you-doing-to-cut-costs/page3

what i'm getting at is somebody somewhere is confusing lux and lumens.
they are 2 totally different ways of measuring light illumination levels.
google it, its confusing as hell!

your posting #28 said 280 lumen.
convert that to lux is 3013 lux.

3000 lux is spotlight bright, or wanderers floodlight bright.

there's no way a 4W downlight can get to those lux levels.

maybe somebody that did the measurements got to 280 lux.
and when they printed the spec sheets changed the word lux to lumen
to make it look better than it really is. (eg speaker wattages: pmpo vs rms)

thats why i'm saying 280 lux = 26 lumen is much more likely to be the
light levels for a 4W downlight, not 280 lumen = 3013 lux.

there is one question to the ebay sellers, at what distance was the
light level measurement taken?

 

[Jola]

3000 lux is spotlight bright, or wanderers floodlight bright.

Something is wrong with your figures !

I have just looked at the specs of a small projector (Sanyo PLV-Z3000), and it is 1200 ANSI lumens. Many small projectors are much brighter than that.

According to you that would be almost 13 000 lux, or more than four time brighter than the wanderers floodlight lights.

For a new design LED spot to be 280 lumens is quite believable, and probably correct - that is only a quarter as bright as the projector.

I am not an expert on this, but your figures make no sense at all. I think that these conversions are more complicated than what you make them.

See : http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/illumination.html

 

[rsd]

There are LED's available that have been manufactured to be fully, properly dimable from any normal standard wall dimmer. No need to change anything!

You just need to look in the right place

Although this is a bit off-topic, your website is a bit too much hard work for me. No offence meant, but I'm not going to download a stack of PDFs and trawl through them. Would be way better if you had well categorized lists of your products right on the site. It would also make your site a lot more search engine friendly.