LED house bulbs?

Most of my bulbs are LEDs. As my CFLs die, they get replaced with LEDs. I like that they have a wide variety of color temperatures available, and prices are dropping fast. Lowes has them for $3 each right now.

For whatever reason, all of them at the local LowesDepot are like $8-9 each. Guess I better keep looking.

I tried one of the LED floodlight bulbs in my kitchen can lights, where I have been replacing CFL's about once a year. The fixtures have quite a few little holes in them and are open on the bottom, so I don't believe they trap heat excessively. The LED bulb lasted all of a week. Got my money back and figured I'd stick with the CFL's. Either way, it isn't the LED or the fluorescent tube that burns out, it's the cheap-ass Chinese electronic circuitry that converts the 120 VAC to whatever the lightbulb requires.

LEDs need a lot of air flow. They live very short lives without good ventilation.

I have a ton of them thanks to Massachusetts subsidies making them $5 a pop. No problems so far and I like the light they put out. Feels good to know each one uses so little electricity too.

All LED lamps are not created equal. There is a huge difference between the major brands and the cheap Chinese lamps. LEDs last a long time- the drivers do not if they overheat. The major manufacturers put a lot of effort and engineering into heat dissipation. The funky shapes of some lamps are on purpose, to draw air through then. Some have miniature fans built in. Very, very few are designed to go in enclosed fixtures. One of the great things about LED is that it does not produce UV like incandescent and fluorescent. It won't fade color, affect wine, or attract insects. Great for outdoor eating areas.

Ya know, that's another question I have. I understand the need to keep a transformer etc cool, when a LED lamp is made that requires a fan to keep it cool I have to wonder just how much energy it really saves compared to an incandescent.

Shortly after moving in, I started the switch to LEDs. We had 60s can lights, which are actually box lights with horrible light output even with high wattage bulbs. Anyhow, I went with the CREE LR6 retrofit kit. Its been almost 4 years now and we haven't had a failure yet. They were expensive, but I had someone import them for me from MA to get their tax rebate...

I recently bought the 2d Phillips bulbs at HD to replace all of the stupid CFLs that take time to warm up.

Something worth noting is that the LEDs aren't significantly more efficient than CFLs, and the cheap ones are often worse. Its still a huge savings over incandescent, but if you don't mind the warm up time of CFLs you won't get much of a benefit.

Also worth noting is that their life is based on the bulb being used for 3 hours a day. So they really won't last 20 years.

Yeah, bulb life. CFL's are supposed to last forever, but the life is based on leaving them on. Cycling them on and off shortens their life drastically; something the greenies and the government conveniently left out in the big energy savings propaganda push.

I am waiting for LEDs to come down a bit more. I bought 4 CFLs for the inside of the house for <$5. As the CFLs go out LEDs should be coming down in price and then I will make the switch. I have noticed as the price of the CFLs have went down the quality has too. I have some bulbs still going from when I originally switched 10 years ago and I have had some go out that I bought 2 years ago. :shrug:

I love the lack of heat generation in CFLs in comparison to incandescent bulbs. I will tolerate the 5 second start up time for that!

EastCoastMojo wrote: We just picked up some LED bulbs for the house last week. They were about $10 for the pair. Great lights, 40w equivilent are bright but not harsh. Actual draw around 7w. The interesting thing is these bulbs have drawn our attention to a potential wiring issue. We put two in a ceiling fan fixture, that is contrled by a motion sensitive switch. (This room has the switch located in a weird spot) This switch is set to turn the overhead lights off after 60 or so seconds of inactivity, but with these bulbs in the light only dims - they never go completely out unless I move the switch to off instead of auto. When in auto, the lights do come on full bright when the switch detects movement. I think these draw so little wattage that they are showing us some wiring issue in this fan, but we have yet to investigate further. Any ideas what to look for?

Light switches especially for LED are now available.

We just installed all new lights in the new house at the Compound, 150 can lights with LEDs, awesome amount of clean light.

Using LED's pretty much exclusively since last year in the house I was renting, and the house we're building is going to only have LED's installed.

Lighting might only be 7-10% if curmudgeon's numbers are right, but it's a big easy number to drop by 90% for little investment.

40 bulbs x 60w = 2400w. 40 bulbs x 7w = 210w. We're closing in on $0.20/kwH here, so it adds up.