LED light fixtures

Hmm, I never heard that. You learn something new every day!

I'm planning 100% LED in our new house. I bought ceiling can retrofit kits, and they work great. I'm slowly replacing those awful CFL's in the table lamps as we go.

The one downside I've run into already is the rapidly changing market. I bought 6 units for the kitchen at $30 each. I went back to get more (I need 20 in all) and they no longer carry them! I can't even find the same model on-line. I went to another store and bought their version of the same thing, but they don't match. Not only do they look different when they are off, but when they are turned on, the light output and color is different. If you have a big room with a lot of ceiling cans, what do you do 10 years from now when one burns out, and there isn't a matching replacement available? Replace them all, or have one that doesn't match? I bought a bunch of the newer ones so I will have a few spares for the kitchen, which uses 8 of them. I'm using the original 6 in other rooms where it isn't noticeable that they don't match. Bear in mind- this obsolescence occurred in less than a year!

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"What one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces." -John Wesley

Ya, that is a problem. When we sell LED product to customers, we usually sell a few extra in case a few fail. The other option long term, is to change many rooms to LED at once. Then, if in four years a couple fail, you can change one or two of your most used rooms to new models of LEDs, and take the ones that are still working out as spares for the rest of the house. Or move them to a new area still using incandescent bulbs. They will just keep getting better and cheaper.

Also, the development will start to slow down at some point, I'm guessing around 3-4 years from now, and the changes will not be as large between generations of product.

Over the last 5 years we have been replacing all our lights with LED's. We found the 4' tube LED's and replaced the kitchen lights when the ballast went out, so the cost was slightly more than the ballast. They have been in for 2 years and we love them, the light does not bother my eyes like the fluorescents. There are some lights that we put in 5 years ago and we haven't replaced yet. We replaced the outdoor light on the front porch that stays on all night every night and it lasted over 4 years. We were replacing the standard bulbs about twice a year on it.

And I love that they don't get hot. I used to burn myself turning off the light over my bed, now it doesn't matter if I touch it.

We also replaced all of our RV lights with LED's. It helps us two ways, one the lights don't get hot and add to the Air conditioning load in the summer, and when we dry camp we don't worry about using the lights as they use so little energy.

Dawn

As above, we're going 100% LED in our house and I refuse to use those awful CFL's.

We've been using the LED lights in our home for over a decade. The early LED lights were not very good. They failed often, sometimes out of the box, very frequently within a month. Bought ten and took thirty back! Thirty because the replacements didn't work for long and those went back through multiple cycles. Eventually after about a year or so of that they got us all ones that worked.

The light quality of those early ones was very bad and they did have a 60Hz flicker which you noticed when you moved you hands quickly. The color was also poor quality.

A few years ago they came out with a new very different LED light. I have now replaced all the old ones with the new ones. The new ones don't have the flicker and the light quality is far better and I've only had one failed bulb. I'm now using them in both our house and our butcher shop for a total of about 50 lights.

I'm very pleased with the modern LED lights.

CREE is perhaps the best. There are other good ones too.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

We've had motion sensor LED's from Sams Club on our house for a couple years now. I am pleased with the color and brightness and durability of these lights. But as was said previously, if the LEDs burn out, the fixture currently would be trashed. If there was a way to replace the individual bulbs it would be great and save so much on landfill space.

We bought one like that to replace the fluorescent unit in our kitchen... It puts out more light than the fluorescent and doesn't flicker and looks nicer with its round shape than the square fluorescent did. I figure one time in the land fill with no mercury is better than all the fluorescent tubes over that time period with mercury.

don't know about FIXTURES..but I've been replacing every single bulb in my house as I can afford it with the LED bulbs..I love them..they are much nicer than cfls

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Brenda Groth
http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/

I am putting them in anywhere that is difficult to reach or in fixtures that are prone to take out filament bulbs. Unlike the CFL debacle, I think they are a good advancement in technology.

I'd be curious to find out if anyone has used one outdoors in extreme cold (or hot). I have them in my barn, but I just put them in this spring.

(As a mildly related note, I just found out this winter that the communications electronics in my heat-pump don't work below -5, and when they don't, the whole system doesn't work. Genius. I suspect that not all LED fixtures will be the same, and that some will have issues in extremes, cold especially.)

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Honesty and integrity are homesteading virtues.

Well, I put up the fixture yesterday. It was a bit of a pain to install, but now that I've done it once, I could probably do it again. I will say, it really puts out a lot of light. In the 12 X 15 room no other lamp is needed. I can definitely see eventually replacing all the other ceiling fixtures with these LED lights. Thanks everyone for your advice!

As far as temperature extremes go- the one in my barn has seen from +3 F. to +107 F. I wouldn't think cold would affect them as much as heat would. LED's are going to be a big help in unheated buildings during cold weather. Fluorescents don't like to start in very cold weather.

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"What one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces." -John Wesley

I love them -- I can get the right temperature for my design studio, the lessen the need to change out bulbs in high places, and I don't have to worry about dropping a CFL and possibly harming our dogs and cats.

My only complaint? What am I going to use in the well house to keep pipes from freezing?

What am I going to use in the well house to keep pipes from freezing?

$15 electric heater. It'll even have a thermostat.

I put an LED light in the partially enclosed chicken coop last November. It did fine through the almost thirty-below in early December. It's turned off now, and will be turned off until next fall, so I'm not going to be able to say how well it handles heat, but it seems to handle cold weather just fine.

Kathleen

I recently bought this
LED lamp at interior-deluxe.com. I previously had no experience with such lights, but I love them!!