LED bulbs ready for prime time?

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jglongisland
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LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by jglongisland » April 16th, 2011, 4:20 pm

Are LED bulbs ready for prime time yet? I see them at HD and Lowe's now; I really could use 100 watt ones as well as 40 watt equivalent candelabra bulbs. I tried to get away with CFL candelabra ones but my wife didn't go along. I could probably save $25-5/month if I could change the bulbs in a 2-3 rooms (although in the winter the bulbs do lower the heating bill).

I've already converted about 60-70% of the house to CFL. Unfortunately I'm the only one who realizes that lights can be turned off.
Last edited by jglongisland on April 16th, 2011, 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 16th, 2011, 4:25 pm

In my opinion, yes. I have a Philips Master from HD in my office, 40 watt equivalent, and I can't tell the difference between that and an incandescent.

In my spectroscope, there's a wide red area into orange and yellow, a sharp green band, a blue band, and a purple band.

The rest of the office is lit with balanced CFLs in a variety of color temperatures. The light is indistinguishable from an incandescent, except that blues and greens show well in it (and don't in standard incandescent lighting).

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by jglongisland » April 16th, 2011, 4:36 pm

MorpheusPA wrote:In my opinion, yes. I have a Philips Master from HD in my office, 40 watt equivalent, and I can't tell the difference between that and an incandescent.

In my spectroscope, there's a wide red area into orange and yellow, a sharp green band, a blue band, and a purple band.

The rest of the office is lit with balanced CFLs in a variety of color temperatures. The light is indistinguishable from an incandescent, except that blues and greens show well in it (and don't in standard incandescent lighting).
Does anyone make a 100 watt equivalent in a regular bulb form?

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by HanLawn » April 16th, 2011, 5:49 pm

I tried one of the Philips clear candelabra one {2.5 watt}, suppose to replace a 15 watt incandescent, it produced a high quality type light, but nowhere near as bright.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » April 16th, 2011, 7:02 pm

During an unforeseen remodeling last fall I had them replace the under-counter puck lights in the kitchen with these LED strip lights from Lowe's.

Image

I don't know what the color is but they are very white (not yellowish like in the photo). I let the camera pick the color balance and it missed it. The kitchen is white with black trim so white is the effect we wanted. That set over the sink never gets turned off. They are the night light for that part of the house. If I turned all the under-counters on, I would not need the overhead florescents at all for actual illumination. It is plenty bright with the under-counters. But we are in the overhead habit, so that is how that goes. If you are able to see your under counter lights, you have to watch what you're getting. For our purpose we needed a white fixture. Most of them are yellowed looking.

For the overhead florescents we went with the newest electronic ballast and tube design. The newest is the T12. The bulb itself is not much bigger around than my finger, but they are instant-on at full brightness.

You could probably replace the overhead lights with strip LEDs, now that I think about it. Cost might be about the same. Appearance would be much different.


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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 16th, 2011, 8:01 pm

Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:For the overhead florescents we went with the newest electronic ballast and tube design. The newest is the T12. The bulb itself is not much bigger around than my finger, but they are instant-on at full brightness.
T5? The T12s are more than an inch across, the T5 is half an inch.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 16th, 2011, 8:04 pm

jglongisland wrote:Does anyone make a 100 watt equivalent in a regular bulb form?
I have no idea--just check color temperatures first if you find one. I twinned the incandescent (well, close enough, as incandescent is 2500-2700K, this is a 2800K, so a touch bluer). Most LEDs are in the 3500-4500K range, which I find way too white to blue-white for my taste. I try for light color an hour after sunrise, not at noon on an overcast day.

Heat dissipation becomes the issue from the LEDs as the electronics warm. Mine is passive and no warmer than a T12 fluorescent. Two and a half times the wattage (20 watts, total) would require much better heat-sinks.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by simpson » April 16th, 2011, 8:28 pm

I don't know how much lowes or homedepot sell them for but i have bought alot of led stuff from this place.http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/ ... _prods.htm

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » April 17th, 2011, 11:12 pm

Thanks Morph. I was looking at the wrong light fixture. Yes, T5 is the dinky little tube. 5/8-inch in diameter. T12 is the ancient gas guzzler we all saw in elementary school. But this is about LEDs anyway, so...

Sam's Warehouse has a great LED flashlight if anyone is interested. For $25 you get two flashlights. One is whopping 160 lumens and the other is a whopping 220 lumens. I've had the 160 lights for about 3 years and they are great. I use one every night when I walk the dog to look for critters up ahead of us. We walk toward a green belt and often see possums, skunks, raccoons and even a pig once. The rumor is there are coyotes out there, so I just want to see them first. The 160 lumen lights throw a beam a full block with no problem. It is blinding if you are on the other end of the beam.

The problem with LEDs indoors is getting the right color. Several years ago I bought a pair of those solar recharged lights that are supposed to guide you along the sidewalk. All the ones I saw were very high K rated lights. The one I bought was very mellow looking. It did not carry a K rating but I would guess it was down around 2,100 K. When it finally went bad (about 3 weeks of use and the battery was shot), I disassembled it and found two LEDs inside. One was the high temp (3,000K+) and the other was bright yellow. Together and inside the translucent housing, it looked okay.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 17th, 2011, 11:35 pm

Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:Thanks Morph. I was looking at the wrong light fixture. Yes, T5 is the dinky little tube. 5/8-inch in diameter. T12 is the ancient gas guzzler we all saw in elementary school. But this is about LEDs anyway, so...
Hey, even the gas-guzzlers are getting much better. My 80 watt T12 plant lights output 6500 lumens--a lumens per watt efficiency of around 80. Pretty good.

The best T5 bulbs can go over 100, but plants can't rest against T5s. They don't notice being against T12s.
The problem with LEDs indoors is getting the right color. Several years ago I bought a pair of those solar recharged lights that are supposed to guide you along the sidewalk. All the ones I saw were very high K rated lights. The one I bought was very mellow looking. It did not carry a K rating but I would guess it was down around 2,100 K. When it finally went bad (about 3 weeks of use and the battery was shot), I disassembled it and found two LEDs inside. One was the high temp (3,000K+) and the other was bright yellow. Together and inside the translucent housing, it looked okay.
Typical. White light is made of red, green, and blue LEDs in balance with each other. My office lamp uses a phosphor coating to translate some of the light across the red range as well. Hide them behind a translucent coating and you'll never notice.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by bpgreen » April 18th, 2011, 12:17 am

I've bought about 10 LED bulbs since this thread started. The biggest saving is going to come from the dining room light. It's got 5 bulbs in it and I think they used to be 10-20 watt chandelier bulbs, but they got replaced with 40 and 60 watt bulbs (basically, whatever was on hand when my wife went to replace them). Since that would get too bright, she'd leave some of them empty, but I'm going from 100 watts (a 40 and a 60) to 12.5 watts (5 2.5 watt bulbs).

And I've replaced a few 40 watt bulbs with 9 watt bulbs. One of the fixtures needs bulbs that are dimmable and most of the LED bulbs aren't, but I found some at Home Depot that can be used with dimmers, so I picked up a couple of them.

I like the LEDs better than the CFLs because there's no pause before the light comes on.

Correction. This wasn't the thread that got me to start buying the LEDs. there was another thread about them.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » April 19th, 2011, 10:37 am

I like them better than CFLs because there is no mercury in them.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by jglongisland » April 19th, 2011, 10:40 am

I just checked at HD, the candelebra ones don't have enough light and they don't have regular 100 watt dimmables yet.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 19th, 2011, 10:43 am

Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:I like them better than CFLs because there is no mercury in them.
+1. Granted, not that much, but it's not much of a mercury savings over incandescent (from coal fired plants which release mercury) unless they're recycled.

Keep in mind there's gold, gallium, indium, and selenium (just the rare earths) in LEDs. They really should be recycled as well to get some of that back as we have limited amounts. The manufacturing process also isn't very environmentally-friendly, although power savings balances that out easily.

I just wish a) the price would come down, and b) they'd have higher equivalent wattages available. I'd kill to replace my 150-watt equivalent lamps with LEDs.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 19th, 2011, 10:45 am

jglongisland wrote:I just checked at HD, the candelebra ones don't have enough light and they don't have regular 100 watt dimmables yet.
Do you remember what wattage equivalent (or lumens) they had for candelabra bulbs?

I use 40-watt incandescent in mine as I like the option of very bright light when we have Game Day. For dinners, of course, they're dimmed down considerably.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by jglongisland » April 19th, 2011, 10:48 am

MorpheusPA wrote:
Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:I like them better than CFLs because there is no mercury in them.
+1. Granted, not that much, but it's not much of a mercury savings over incandescent (from coal fired plants which release mercury) unless they're recycled.

Keep in mind there's gold, gallium, indium, and selenium (just the rare earths) in LEDs. They really should be recycled as well to get some of that back as we have limited amounts. The manufacturing process also isn't very environmentally-friendly, although power savings balances that out easily.

I just wish a) the price would come down, and b) they'd have higher equivalent wattages available. I'd kill to replace my 150-watt equivalent lamps with LEDs.
The manufacturing processes get overlooked, as great as solar panels are apparently the process to manufacture them is about as toxic as you can get. Lots of solvents, etc.

I could save a lot of money each month if I could swap out the candelabra bulbs. I have 24 40 watt ones that probably stay on 12-14 hours a day.

I have another 8 100 watt fixctures that I can't swap to CFL because of the crappy dimming quality; those also stay on about 8-10 hours a day.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by jglongisland » April 19th, 2011, 10:48 am

MorpheusPA wrote:
jglongisland wrote:I just checked at HD, the candelebra ones don't have enough light and they don't have regular 100 watt dimmables yet.
Do you remember what wattage equivalent (or lumens) they had for candelabra bulbs?

I use 40-watt incandescent in mine as I like the option of very bright light when we have Game Day. For dinners, of course, they're dimmed down considerably.
15 watt equivalent.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » April 19th, 2011, 10:57 am

jglongisland wrote: The manufacturing processes get overlooked, as great as solar panels are apparently the process to manufacture them is about as toxic as you can get. Lots of solvents, etc.
So I hear, but never evaluated it--solar isn't on the docket for this house, I'm afraid.
I could save a lot of money each month if I could swap out the candelabra bulbs. I have 24 40 watt ones that probably stay on 12-14 hours a day.

I have another 8 100 watt fixctures that I can't swap to CFL because of the crappy dimming quality; those also stay on about 8-10 hours a day.
Heh, mine run maybe eight hours a month, but the dining room isn't a place we use all that often.

I hear you on the dimming quality. The light in my office is one I dim, and the CFL did a terrible job. It's a small, dark corner...40 watts is actually too much, and it sits right in my vision to the left. Hence the LED there, which has a beautiful dimming range just like an incandescent (although it seems more linear, it still can be dropped to just a few watts equivalent).

Not that I get much power savings dimming 8 watts to 2, but... :-)

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by jglongisland » April 19th, 2011, 10:58 am

And don't forget that for about 7 months a year (give or take) the bulbs are actually reducing your heating costs....

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by bpgreen » April 19th, 2011, 10:33 pm

"I could save a lot of money each month if I could swap out the candelabra bulbs. I have 24 40 watt ones that probably stay on 12-14 hours a day. "

The dimmable bulbs I bought at HD were 40 watt replacements (9 watt, 429 lumens).

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